Re: [LSFMMBPF TOPIC] Killing LSFMMBPF

James Bottomley
2020-03-06T19:25:06Z

On Fri, 2020-03-06 at 10:23 -0800, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 06, 2020 at 09:37:59AM -0800, James Bottomley wrote:
> > Can I just inject a dose of reality here: The most costly thing is
> > Venue rental (which comes with a F&B minimum) and the continuous
> > Tea and Coffee. Last year for Plumbers, the venue cost us $37k and
> > the breaks $132k (including a lunch buffet, which was a requirement
> > of the venue rental). Given we had 500 attendees, that, alone is
> > $340 per head already. Now we could cut out the continuous tea and
> > coffee ... and the espresso machines you all raved about last year
> > cost us about $7 per shot. But it's not just this, it's also AV
> > (microphones and projectors) and recording, and fast internet
> > access. That all came to about $100k last year (or an extra $200
> > per head). So you can see, running at the level Plumbers does
> > you're already looking at $540 a head, which, co-incidentally is
> > close to our attendee fee. To get to $300 per head, you lot will
> > have to give up something in addition to the espresso machines,
> > what is it to be?
>
> I was basing that on https://www.bsdcan.org/2020/registration.php
> which is a ~200 person conference, charging $200 for 2 days. They
> provide morning & afternoon snacks as well as lunch and coffee.

I didn't say you couldn't run a conference for this low, I was just
point out what Plumbers currently costs. FOSDEM clearly manages in
Europe for free, but what they have to give up is huge: No
tea/coffee/lunch/breakfast at all. Doing it in a University helps with
A/V, and venue rental, but you're severely constrained by their
timetable (Ethan Miller did offer us UC Santa Cruz one year for LSF/MM
but we eventually concluded that date constraints and logistics would
just be too difficult).

James