[yapc] howto conference costs

Adam Turoff ziggy at panix.com
Fri Jun 27 09:59:23 CDT 2003


On Tue, Jun 24, 2003 at 09:46:28PM -0400, Dan MacNeil wrote:
> I'm still amazed at how cheap and useful the conference was.
> 
> Other non profit (social action/peace/justice/housing) conferences are not
> as cheap.
> 
> --$200-$400 seems typical.
> 
> I'm wondering if YAPC::NA is reproducable.

This was the fifth YAPC::NA; all of them have been remarkably similar in
terms of cost and financing.  Next month will be the third YAPC::Europe,
which also uses a similar model.  There have also been five or six German
Perl Workshops, and one each of the Scandinavian Perl Weekend, YAPC::Israel
and YAPC::Canada.

> How was this low cost achieved?

1) Find a low cost venue (universities)
2) Pay for the basics (room rental, A/V equipment rental, coffee breaks)
3) Keep costs low (dorm space availability, proximity to participants)
4) Use unpaid volunteers (organizers, speakers)
 
> Was the bulk of the cost covered by ActiveState or other donor?

It's important to understand the cost structure.  Over the years, the
amount of sponsorship has varied greatly.  Sometimes it has been a
little more than half of the total event cost.  Other times it's been a
lot less.

The basic model is to use registration fees to bay for the basics, and
use sponsorship to cover everything else (e.g. breakfast, lunch, dinner,
proceedings).  Catering is more than half the overall cost, but everyone
can deal with it if there's no box lunch.

One goal behind organizing a YAPC event is to make it self-funded.  The
Perl Foundation can help by writing checks before all of the
registration funds are in, but it's not there to underwrite $50,000
in conference expenses or shortfalls.

Z.




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