Thanks Jim and Josh. If we keep the meal option, I'll go with the $20 Cougar Card. To keep the pricing simple though, I may just do without the meal option. From my experience last year, I only ate on campus for lunch. I wasn't sure about everyone else. I knew the shopping cart wouldn't be an option this year. I'm hoping that future conferences will have the ability to 'add' items to their registration vs having the single drop-down. Maybe we can include ACT development in the hackathon ;-)
<br><br>I'll update the wiki tonight with pricing schemes. I think we may take the Buffalo approach to post-conference housing and handle them separately. <br><br>I just thought of another idea for the meal option but I'll need to think about it more before putting it out there. It may be crazy (or maybe it's me ;-)
<br><br>Jeremy<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 2/20/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Jim Brandt</b> <<a href="mailto:cbrandt@buffalo.edu">cbrandt@buffalo.edu</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Jeremy,<br><br>The general advice I would offer is keep it simple. Don't make your life<br>a misery trying to accommodate a bunch of confusing combinations. Think<br>about other big conferences you may have attended and use that as your
<br>guideline. OSCON, for example, does the earlybird thing and a few<br>options with tutorials, but they keep it simple with food.<br><br>I think the general plan you outlined below is very sensible for<br>registration/housing. For Buffalo we had to pay in one lump sum as well,
<br>so we collected money and gave UB a single check for the housing. We had<br>one or two stay long, and I dealt with those individually as exceptions<br>rather than trying to offer it as an option for everyone.<br><br>For food, I agree with Josh. Go with the card and keep it simple. YAPC
<br>attendees are a resourceful bunch and will sort things out for<br>themselves given reasonable options.<br><br>Also agree with Josh not to target a shopping cart for this round. Keep<br>the price combinations somewhat simple so you don't need the full
<br>shopping card functionality.<br><br>Hope this helps. Feel free to throw a proposed 'final' pricing structure<br>up on the wiki and poll us again. Then we can comment one more time<br>before you go live. Also, glad to hear you're working on this stuff now.
<br>Seems to me the timing is just about right to be working out these details.<br><br>Jim<br><br><br>Jeremy Fluhmann wrote:<br>> Hey everyone,<br>><br>> I'm working on the housing and food worksheets that UH wants filled
<br>> out. The form states that the group is responsible for making payment<br>> on the dorms and meal plans instead of the individual person staying in<br>> the room. Here's my request for ideas. I'm trying to figure out how to
<br>> structure the conference pricing to include housing and meals. One<br>> option is to have separate prices on the YAPC::NA site for the following:<br>> early bird - $85<br>> early bird w/single room (3 nights) - $184
<br>> early bird w/double room (3 nights) - $145<br>> normal price - $100<br>> normal w/single room (3 nights) - $199<br>> normal w/double room (3 nights) - $160<br>><br>> But, then there's also the food costs:
<br>> 3 meal packing in the RFoC (Real Food on Campus) all-you-can-eat -<br>> $21.25/day<br>> the 3-meal package is broken up into the meals as following:<br>> * Breakfast - $5.75<br>> * Lunch - $6.75<br>
> * Dinner - $8.75<br>> So, assuming someone's first meal is breakfast on Monday and last meal<br>> is lunch on Wednesday (minus the auction dinner):<br>> $21.25 * 2 + 5.75 + 6.75 - 8.75 = $46.25<br>> But, if people are like me, they rarely eat breakfast and I never ate
<br>> breakfast at YAPC::NA 2006. Also, I know several people went off-campus<br>> for dinner last year. And I'd rather not include prices for variations<br>> on food.<br>><br>> We might try to utilize UH's Cougar card, a declining value meal card.
<br>> Then, we could include something like:<br>> w/ $20 Cougar card<br>> w/ $40 Cougar card<br>><br>> That would include 6 more prices in the pricing scheme. I liked the<br>> "shopping cart" from last year. I'm wondering if future ACT-hosted
<br>> sites could implement a shopping cart. Another alternative to the meal<br>> pricing is to just not include it on the conference pricing and let<br>> everyone fend for themselves.<br>><br>> Another problem is accommodating the people staying longer than the
<br>> "typical" conference stay Sun-night through Wednesday afternoon. We<br>> need to be able to accommodate these people with housing and food.<br>><br>> Should we try and include "all" pricing options in the choices for the
<br>> conference? Should we separate the housing and food out into an<br>> external shopping cart? Should we separate out only the special cases<br>> of extended stays?<br>><br>> I welcome any and ALL thoughts and ideas.
<br>><br>> Thanks,<br>> Jeremy<br>><br>><br>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>><br>> _______________________________________________<br>> YAPC-NA-organizers mailing list
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--<br>Jim Brandt<br>Conferences Chair<br>The Perl Foundation<br>email: <a href="mailto:cbrandt@perlfoundation.org">cbrandt@perlfoundation.org</a><br>IM: <a href="mailto:cbrandtbuffalo@mac.com">cbrandtbuffalo@mac.com</a><br>
perlmonks: cbrandtbuffalo<br></blockquote></div><br>