Re: [LSFMMBPF TOPIC] Killing LSFMMBPF

James Bottomley
2020-03-06T19:15:55Z

On Fri, 2020-03-06 at 14:07 -0500, Martin K. Petersen wrote:
> Jason,
>
> > Yes, I can confirm this from another smaller hotel-style conference
> > I've been involved organizing on occasion. $600-$800 is required to
> > break even without major sponsorship $$ for the ~100 people mark,
> > and that is without the usual food and venue perks we see at
> > plumbers/lsfmm.
>
> Yep. Our actual per-person cost for LSF/MM/BPF is in excess of $1K.
> That limits who we can invite. Personally I absolutely hate the
> invitation aspect and process. But we are very constrained wrt. how
> many we can actually accommodate by the amount of funding we get.
> Things appear to be better this year, but sponsor mergers and
> acquisitions have been a major concern the past few years.

To be a bit mercenary (hey, it's my job, I'm Plumbers treasurer this
year) our sponsors are mostly the same companies. If we combine LSF/MM
and Plumbers, I can't see too many of them stepping up to sponsor us
twice, so we'll have a net loss of sponsor funding for the combined
event as well. This is likely another argument for doing two
separately sponsored events.

James