[yapc] Low attendance?

Jim Brandt cbrandt at buffalo.edu
Mon May 24 19:53:49 CDT 2004


First off, I can say this: there is absolutely *no* chance the 
conference will be cancelled. We ran several budgets, and we're already 
well above our "worst case" scenario. Plus sponsors have been quite 
generous, so we'll have the bases covered.

If you want the long version, keep reading...

I can give a little more context on current registrations. Since this 
is the first time I've done this, I also wanted a way to know, as much 
as possible, how we were doing at various points with regard to 
registration. I have access to the past registration info, so I made a 
simple histogram of past registrations over time. Here's some info 
compared with the last two years:

* last year there were 124 people registered by 5/30 and the conference 
was on the exact same dates. So we are right on track with last year. 
Final "official" numbers for last year were 161.

* two years ago, there were about 119 registered by 5/30, but the 
conference was 10 days later. So we are a little behind that pace, but 
the final numbers were higher at 262.

The striking thing for me from running these numbers was the number of 
late registrations. Last year over 40 people registered in the last 2 
weeks. Two years ago, 140 people registered in the last month. So for 
some reason, people seem to procrastinate with their arrangements even 
when they are planning on coming.

If you're one of those people waiting until the last minute, it's 
almost here!

If you're really interested in past trends, here are some open source 
numbers from past yapc::NA's in *very* basic form:

http://yapc.org/America/yapc_reg_2002.html
http://yapc.org/America/yapc_reg_2003.html

The asterisks are registrations on that day.

Jim


On May 22, 2004, at 8:59 PM, Jeff Bisbee wrote:

> * Tim Maher (tim at consultix-inc.com) wrote:
>> If by chance it's true that the actual registrations are
>> unusually low, can somebody in the know please indicate whether
>> it's certain at this time that the conference will really take place?
>
> There are 125 registrants for yapc 2004 on donate.perlfoundation.org 
> (this
> is not a very accurate # because of people using it to test stolen 
> credit
> card #s).  At any rate 125 sounds better than 22 :)
>
> -- Jeff Bisbee / yapc at jbisbee.com / jbisbee.com
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================================
Jim Brandt
YAPC Coordinator
YAPC::NA::2004
University at Buffalo
Buffalo, NY




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