From fluhmann at gmail.com Sat Feb 17 07:19:18 2007 From: fluhmann at gmail.com (Jeremy Fluhmann) Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2007 09:19:18 -0600 Subject: [Yapc-na-organizers] ideas for housing payments Message-ID: <7f7c2d5e0702170719h3cbd3bfcg11c64209d44ad7b@mail.gmail.com> Hey everyone, I'm working on the housing and food worksheets that UH wants filled out. The form states that the group is responsible for making payment on the dorms and meal plans instead of the individual person staying in the room. Here's my request for ideas. I'm trying to figure out how to structure the conference pricing to include housing and meals. One option is to have separate prices on the YAPC::NA site for the following: early bird - $85 early bird w/single room (3 nights) - $184 early bird w/double room (3 nights) - $145 normal price - $100 normal w/single room (3 nights) - $199 normal w/double room (3 nights) - $160 But, then there's also the food costs: 3 meal packing in the RFoC (Real Food on Campus) all-you-can-eat - $21.25/day the 3-meal package is broken up into the meals as following: * Breakfast - $5.75 * Lunch - $6.75 * Dinner - $8.75 So, assuming someone's first meal is breakfast on Monday and last meal is lunch on Wednesday (minus the auction dinner): $21.25 * 2 + 5.75 + 6.75 - 8.75 = $46.25 But, if people are like me, they rarely eat breakfast and I never ate breakfast at YAPC::NA 2006. Also, I know several people went off-campus for dinner last year. And I'd rather not include prices for variations on food. We might try to utilize UH's Cougar card, a declining value meal card. Then, we could include something like: w/ $20 Cougar card w/ $40 Cougar card That would include 6 more prices in the pricing scheme. I liked the "shopping cart" from last year. I'm wondering if future ACT-hosted sites could implement a shopping cart. Another alternative to the meal pricing is to just not include it on the conference pricing and let everyone fend for themselves. Another problem is accommodating the people staying longer than the "typical" conference stay Sun-night through Wednesday afternoon. We need to be able to accommodate these people with housing and food. Should we try and include "all" pricing options in the choices for the conference? Should we separate the housing and food out into an external shopping cart? Should we separate out only the special cases of extended stays? I welcome any and ALL thoughts and ideas. Thanks, Jeremy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/yapc-na-organizers/attachments/20070217/f089ff32/attachment.html From joshua.mcadams at gmail.com Sat Feb 17 11:40:31 2007 From: joshua.mcadams at gmail.com (Joshua McAdams) Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2007 13:40:31 -0600 Subject: [Yapc-na-organizers] ideas for housing payments In-Reply-To: <7f7c2d5e0702170719h3cbd3bfcg11c64209d44ad7b@mail.gmail.com> References: <7f7c2d5e0702170719h3cbd3bfcg11c64209d44ad7b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49d805d70702171140k4c1491e0n35648c2ebc96cbfd@mail.gmail.com> > Should we try and include "all" pricing options in the choices for the > conference? Should we separate the housing and food out into an external > shopping cart? Should we separate out only the special cases of extended > stays? Welcome to what was the most painful part of the conference, for me at least :) I still have a couple of housing issues that I'm dealing with... Kurt, you'll be hearing from me soon ;) Last year at IIT, they really wanted us to use meal cards, similar to the Cougar cards, but they wanted to know the exact days in which the cards could be used (similar to the RFoC)... understandable, but practically impossible. It sounds like you have a few options for food this year though and that you can definitely make out better than we did. If I'm understanding the RFoC plan, you pre-pay for specific (day and meal) all-you-can eat meals. This sounds good, but the problem with YAPC is that attendees don't even know what they'll be doing for any meal until they get there. It's easy to be pulled into a group outing five minutes before lunch or purchase dinner with Larry at the auction and miss a pre-paid dinner, so if the RFoC is tied to a specific day and meal, it might not even be worth offering. If the University is stiff-arming you into buying some type of meal plan for people to eat on-campus, then the Cougar cards might be the best option. With my perceived understanding of how they work, it seems like you'll be able to buy credit for any day/meal combination and use that credit until the card expires. IIT let us do something like this, only they also wanted to know the day/meal that the card was going to be used and if that card wasn't used on that day, they couldn't guarantee at hot meal. Whether the University you are working with is like IIT or (seemingly) less picky, this option has a few advantages. First, there is the flexibility in meal choice (even if it is a bag of chips and cold sandwich) and then there is the ability to go wild with the remaining balance on the card at the end of the conference. So, if you buy at $40 Cougar Card, and end up only using $30 through the week, you can go buy a case of Red Bull from the cafeteria or kiosk before you leave and actually use all of your money. Or, in the case of many YAPC::NA 2006 attendees, you can donate your card to the hack-a-thons that will no-doubt last a few days past the conference and support the future of Perl with snacks purchased with the extra balance on your card. In short, if my assessment of the RFoC and Cougar Card were correct, the Cougar Card gets my vote. As far as having ACT+Shopping Cart, don't plan on it for this conference. I've heard that ACT has gained some development steam as of late, but I don't think that it has that ability right now to integrate a full-featured shopping cart. Asking the developers to get that functionality working before YAPC::NA 2007 is asking a lot. We asked for TPF payment integration and from what I understand, it's just now making headway this year. The system is very promising, but it's being developed in other people's free time, so tread lightly :) Just a comment on the shopping cart from last year... it had some 80/20 leanings. 80% of the conference attendees had no problem with it, but 20% had trouble and ended up taking 80+% of my time. There is a fine balance between offering lots of options and offering the options that most people will want. We didn't get it right last year, so err on the side of less, yet smarter, options if you can. That's just my .02. From cbrandt at buffalo.edu Tue Feb 20 07:30:54 2007 From: cbrandt at buffalo.edu (Jim Brandt) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2007 10:30:54 -0500 Subject: [Yapc-na-organizers] ideas for housing payments In-Reply-To: <7f7c2d5e0702170719h3cbd3bfcg11c64209d44ad7b@mail.gmail.com> References: <7f7c2d5e0702170719h3cbd3bfcg11c64209d44ad7b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <45DB142E.2010008@buffalo.edu> Jeremy, The general advice I would offer is keep it simple. Don't make your life a misery trying to accommodate a bunch of confusing combinations. Think about other big conferences you may have attended and use that as your guideline. OSCON, for example, does the earlybird thing and a few options with tutorials, but they keep it simple with food. I think the general plan you outlined below is very sensible for registration/housing. For Buffalo we had to pay in one lump sum as well, so we collected money and gave UB a single check for the housing. We had one or two stay long, and I dealt with those individually as exceptions rather than trying to offer it as an option for everyone. For food, I agree with Josh. Go with the card and keep it simple. YAPC attendees are a resourceful bunch and will sort things out for themselves given reasonable options. Also agree with Josh not to target a shopping cart for this round. Keep the price combinations somewhat simple so you don't need the full shopping card functionality. Hope this helps. Feel free to throw a proposed 'final' pricing structure up on the wiki and poll us again. Then we can comment one more time before you go live. Also, glad to hear you're working on this stuff now. Seems to me the timing is just about right to be working out these details. Jim Jeremy Fluhmann wrote: > Hey everyone, > > I'm working on the housing and food worksheets that UH wants filled > out. The form states that the group is responsible for making payment > on the dorms and meal plans instead of the individual person staying in > the room. Here's my request for ideas. I'm trying to figure out how to > structure the conference pricing to include housing and meals. One > option is to have separate prices on the YAPC::NA site for the following: > early bird - $85 > early bird w/single room (3 nights) - $184 > early bird w/double room (3 nights) - $145 > normal price - $100 > normal w/single room (3 nights) - $199 > normal w/double room (3 nights) - $160 > > But, then there's also the food costs: > 3 meal packing in the RFoC (Real Food on Campus) all-you-can-eat - > $21.25/day > the 3-meal package is broken up into the meals as following: > * Breakfast - $5.75 > * Lunch - $6.75 > * Dinner - $8.75 > So, assuming someone's first meal is breakfast on Monday and last meal > is lunch on Wednesday (minus the auction dinner): > $21.25 * 2 + 5.75 + 6.75 - 8.75 = $46.25 > But, if people are like me, they rarely eat breakfast and I never ate > breakfast at YAPC::NA 2006. Also, I know several people went off-campus > for dinner last year. And I'd rather not include prices for variations > on food. > > We might try to utilize UH's Cougar card, a declining value meal card. > Then, we could include something like: > w/ $20 Cougar card > w/ $40 Cougar card > > That would include 6 more prices in the pricing scheme. I liked the > "shopping cart" from last year. I'm wondering if future ACT-hosted > sites could implement a shopping cart. Another alternative to the meal > pricing is to just not include it on the conference pricing and let > everyone fend for themselves. > > Another problem is accommodating the people staying longer than the > "typical" conference stay Sun-night through Wednesday afternoon. We > need to be able to accommodate these people with housing and food. > > Should we try and include "all" pricing options in the choices for the > conference? Should we separate the housing and food out into an > external shopping cart? Should we separate out only the special cases > of extended stays? > > I welcome any and ALL thoughts and ideas. > > Thanks, > Jeremy > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > YAPC-NA-organizers mailing list > YAPC-NA-organizers at pm.org > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/yapc-na-organizers -- Jim Brandt Conferences Chair The Perl Foundation email: cbrandt at perlfoundation.org IM: cbrandtbuffalo at mac.com perlmonks: cbrandtbuffalo