[pm-h] FW: YAPC::NA 2007 in Houston

[Jeremy Fluhmann]

Here's the e-mail from Pete that I mentioned last night at the meeting.

Jeremy

-----Original Message-----
From: Pete Krawczyk [mailto:petek at ignore.us] 
Sent: Wednesday, June 14, 2006 2:10 PM
To: jfluhmann at tamu.edu
Cc: josh at yapcchicago.org
Subject: YAPC::NA 2007 in Houston

Howdy!

I went by and I thought I'd add some notes to your wiki at 
http://www.yapchouston.org/wiki/wiki.cgi - but I can't.

The big things I want to mention are:

Sponsorship shouldn't be included in your base proposal, so the chairs
know you're relying on money you will have rather than money that may
not
show up.  The biggest dock your proposal can take is not being "fiscally

responsible" - so don't count on money you won't have.  Part of the
reason 
we were selected is because we based everything on what we could
minimally 
do, and promised to expand it out from there.  Explain your money - show

every dollar - you'll be rewarded in the end for it.

Plan on 50-75 people not paying: you'll want to give your speakers and 
volunteers "free admission".

We didn't have a template for our proposal, so don't use it as an
end-all 
reference.  Make it distinctly yours, and you'll have a much better
chance 
of being noticed.  (We didn't even get to see prior proposals.)

Pick someone to be czar.  Josh was it for us this year, even though
there 
were a couple of us in the middle of it.  You can't spend all day 
bickering - at the end of the day you need to pick something and go to 
make it successful.

Facilities: Make sure you count A/V costs, staffing costs, and things
like
that with your venue prices.  These are things that are dropped "on the
floor" in proposals that will show you've put a lot of effort and
research
into your proposal.

The big thing is this: make it affordable, make it accessible, and base
it 
on $100 a head - we were lucky to get the right to a price increase.  It

was the first one since YAPC 2001 - which went from $70 to $85.

Sponsors: start early, look local.  The "big ones" will show up when you

poke them.  But you need lots of sponsors.  And know what they'll get if

they sponsor you - have all the options available.  Don't be afraid to 
shill a bit for a few extra bucks, but don't let a sponsor dictate 
anything about the conference to you, either.

And for the record, our final YAPC cost will be around $35-40K.  It's
only 
because of sponsors that we'll be in the black this year.  But the
reason 
it costs so much is because we were able to get sponsors to cover a lot
of 
our bigger costs before we decided to make them.  For example, we found
a 
place that would do a Chicago-style deep dish pizza buffet for about a 
third of our final choice - Dave & Busters.  But because we had a couple

sponsors step up, we could afford the latter in the end.

Finally, come talk to me or Josh during your stay in Chicago.  Sure,
we'll 
be swamped, but there's no quicker way to know what you'll be getting
into 
than to observe what we're doing those last few days.  It took us 8
months 
to pull everything together - 8 months of almost daily attention, care
and 
feeding.  You'll have some help, but it'll be up to you and your core 
committee to make it happen.

Good luck with your bid.

-Pete K, YAPC::NA 2006 co-chair
-- 
Pete Krawczyk
  petek at ignore dot us
  http://www.petekrawczyk.com/