Re: [LSFMMBPF TOPIC] Killing LSFMMBPF

[Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@ziepe.ca>]

On Fri, Mar 06, 2020 at 09:37:59AM -0800, James Bottomley wrote:
> On Fri, 2020-03-06 at 08:05 -0800, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> [...]
> > 2. Charge attendees $300 for a 3-day conference.  This seems to be
> > the going rate (eg BSDCan, PGCon).  This allows the conference to be
> > self-funding without sponsors, and any sponsorship can go towards
> > evening events, food, travel bursaries, etc.
> 
> Can I just inject a dose of reality here:  The most costly thing is
> Venue rental (which comes with a F&B minimum) and the continuous Tea
> and Coffee.  Last year for Plumbers, the venue cost us $37k and the
> breaks $132k (including a lunch buffet, which was a requirement of the
> venue rental).  Given we had 500 attendees, that, alone is $340 per
> head already.  Now we could cut out the continuous tea and coffee ...
> and the espresso machines you all raved about last year cost us about
> $7 per shot.  But it's not just this, it's also AV (microphones and
> projectors) and recording, and fast internet access.  That all came to
> about $100k last year (or an extra $200 per head).  So you can see,
> running at the level Plumbers does you're already looking at $540 a
> head, which, co-incidentally is close to our attendee fee.  To get to
> $300 per head, you lot will have to give up something in addition to
> the espresso machines, what is it to be?

Yes, I can confirm this from another smaller hotel-style conference
I've been involved organizing on occasion. $600-$800 is required to
break even without major sponsorship $$ for the ~100 people mark, and
that is without the usual food and venue perks we see at
plumbers/lsfmm.

Jason