[yapc] "Sold out"

Rob Kinyon rob.kinyon at gmail.com
Mon Apr 30 09:04:00 PDT 2012


For the last session of lightning talks at YAPC Columbus, we didn't
have a room able to hold everyone. So, we simulcast to a second room
with monitors. This second room was also the "noisy room". Not
everyone wants to be attentive and polite while someone else is
talking, but still want to have the discussion as a background. Given
that YAPC::NA is now becoming a traditionally-videotaped event, this
should be trivial to achieve.

The "selling-out" thing is also rather poor form. The goal of YAPC
isn't to sell tickets. It's to share knowledge. At Columbus, we gave
unlimited day-passes to our Platinum sponsors and members of the OSU
open-source club (whose membership in the leadership team gave us the
great rates we received from OSU). I think it would be awesome to
grant day-passes in Madison in a similar fashion. Maybe even advertise
on WMAD that all students who have contributed to an open-source
project in the prior 60 days get a free day-pass?

This is an advocacy conference - be advocates.

Rob

On Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 08:58, JT Smith <admin at yapcna.org> wrote:
> Happy to. The problem is finding single rooms that will hold 400+ people. We
> have the keynote, the lightning talks, the banquet, the Linode Beer Garden,
> and the cPanel game room. All those events need to be able to support the
> entire attendance of YAPC in a single room. The University has such spaces,
> but they aren't all available to YAPC, as they have their own events using
> them. So the event spaces we could get are limited to around 400 people.
>
> That said, YAPC organizers would do well to get fixed facilities so they can
> "Sell Out". Selling out has an important psychological effect on the
> community and even beyond the community. It says that what we're doing is
> important, and valuable. It makes people curious what's going on at YAPC,
> and makes them more eager to attend the next event.
>
> I'm not saying you should go for a deliberately small facility, just one you
> think you have the ability to sell out. The largest YAPC::NA in
> history (YAPC Chicago 2008) was in the 380  range, and last year's YAPC was
> less than 300 people. So booking a facility that can support 400 people is
> certainly not going small. However, if next year's YAPC organizers think
> they'll only be able to pull in 300 people, then they shouldn't be booking a
> space for 500. They should do 325 or 350, something just over what they
> think they can sell out. So they have a reasonable goal to shoot for, but
> still have the ability to sell out.
>
> This is of course just my opinion, but I know many people share it. If the
> organizers of YAPC::NA 2013 choose not to take this advice that's absolutely
> fine. It's their YAPC, and I wouldn't dream of telling them how to run it.
>
>
>
>
> JT Smith
> Director, YAPC::NA 2012
> http://www.yapcna.org
>
> PS
>
> Another way you can support Perl is by adding a link to the bottom of your
> web site, or on your credits / thank you page to http://www.perl.org
>
> On Apr 30, 2012, at 9:48 AM, Matt S Trout wrote:
>
> It'd be quite nice to see some explanation of which things are limiting
> additional signups.
>
> 'Some of you might be thinking, “Why would you book such a small venue?”'
>
> Actually, I'm thinking "Why would you say 'sold out' and then say that
> you hope next year is even bigger and then not bother to actually tell us
> what the limiting factors were".
>
> Especially since that might help next year's organisers not be sold out :)
>
> --
> Matt S Trout - Shadowcat Systems - Perl consulting with a commit bit and a
> clue
>
> http://shadowcat.co.uk/blog/matt-s-trout/
>   http://twitter.com/shadowcat_mst/
>
> Email me now on mst (at) shadowcat.co.uk and let's chat about how our
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-- 
Thanks,
Rob Kinyon


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