Tickets

[Juozas]

Hi,

we had a lot of different ideas on how much tickets should cost. Ranging
from free to 100.

We can't make it free as people won't show up and we'll sell out too
quickly.
We can't make it too cheap as the conference will look "cheap" and
people might think it's not serious enough. They will also complain next
year(s) if the prices increase and they will definitely increase if we
want to bring international speakers.
We can't make it too expensive as that will make it hard to afford.

So we want to make it both affordable and not too cheap.

We can also have split tickets - whole conference, first day, hackathon.

Let's discuss

P.S.
Do not think about this as in terms of paying for venue or other stuff.
We should be able to break even with a help of sponsors.

--
Juozas Kaziukėnas

[Paul Dragoonis]

I agree that 40GBP is reasonable in the middle.

40 * 150 = 6000

Then you add on sponsors, that should be easy to break even with a little leg room for some fancy stuff at the end, such as prizes for things.

Prizes could be random web/php books. Also whisky! or whisky vouchers.

- Paul.

[Paolo Ciarrocca]

I think £40 is low for a 2 day conference, a lot of one day workshops
cost £80-£99.
Also as Juozas points if you want to get international speakers the
price increase would be massive.

Considering that the one day highland fling was £155 and Scottish Ruby
is £245 I think the minimum price for the whole conference should be
£80, one day £35, hackathon £25.

[Paul Dragoonis]

Sorry, to clarify i was talking 40GBP for the first day. The second day perhaps 20GBP, totalling to 60GBP. If the price overall was to be 80, then you could go 60GBP day 1, and 20GBP day 2.

- Paul.

[Juozas]

Just to reiterate: this year international speakers are not going to be
part of the budget. Some will come, but on their own expenses. For a
first year conference I don't want to get involved in sponsoring
flights/hotels and all that mess that requires. If we happen to raise
more budget than needed, we will refund speakers.

Venue costs are going to be finalized tomorrow, but don't think about
that when thinking tickets. My suggestion - think about how much you
would like to pay for a conference? And let me figure out if that price
is workable :) It's likely that even without tickets' costs sponsors
will make it brake even.

I'm thinking ~75.

P.S.
Anything over our budget (any money left unspent) I'm going to report
here and give to charity or other conference.

Juozas Kaziukėnas

[Paul Dragoonis]

Okay Joe.

Look forward to your update tomorrow.

- Paul.

[Dale Harvey]

My thinking was around £75 as well

[Juozas]

And just a short note - 150 is a number of people who are going to be in the event. This includes speakers (12 likely), sponsors and organizers. We are going to have around 130 "real", as in people who will pay for tickets, attendees.

Juozas Kaziukėnas

[Max Manders]

Just weighing in... I agree with Dale that a figure of around £75 would
probably be sufficiently low to attract a wide audience but not so low
as to_cheapen_ the impressions people may have of the event.

Cheers,
Max

On 05/02/12 19:13, Juozas wrote:
> And just a short note - 150 is a number of people who are going to be in
> the event. This includes speakers (12 likely), sponsors and organizers.
> We are going to have around 130 "real", as in people who will pay for
> tickets, attendees.
>
> Juozas Kaziukėnas
>
>
> On 05/02/12 19:09, Dale Harvey wrote:
>> My thinking was around £75 as well
>>
>> On 5 February 2012 18:45, Paul Dragoonis <pa...@whiskyweb.co.uk

>> <mailto:drag...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> I agree that 40GBP is reasonable in the middle.
>>
>> 40 * 150 = 6000
>>
>> Then you add on sponsors, that should be easy to break
>> even with a little
>> leg room for some fancy stuff at the end, such as
>> prizes for things.
>>
>> Prizes could be random web/php books. Also whisky! or
>> whisky vouchers.
>>
>> - Paul.
>>
>> On Sun, Feb 5, 2012 at 5:49 PM,

>> Juozas<juo...@juokaz.com <mailto:juo...@juokaz.com>>

--
Max Manders
w: http://maxmanders.co.uk
e: m...@maxmanders.co.uk
t: +44 (0) 7866 797 983

[Aaron Bassett]

I like the Pycon pricing structure. They actually have 3 tiers:

- Corporate

- Individual

- Student

With the price decreasing as with each level. It's all done on the honour system (maybe require student ticket holders to bring a valid student card?), but it seems to work well for them. Something along the lines of

- Corporate: £125

- Individual: £75

- Student: £50

Then for the workshops we charge £50 for the day but offer the first 10 student places for free?

cheers

Aaron

-----------------------------------------------------------

Aaron Bassett
Senior Developer

E: aa...@thisislevelup.com
W: www.thisislevelup.com
T: 0141 333 6577
@: www.twitter.com/thisislvlup

[Dougal Matthews]

> With the price decreasing as with each level. It's all done on the honour system (maybe require student ticket holders to bring a valid student card?), but it seems to work well for them. Something along the lines of
>
> - Corporate: £125
> - Individual: £75
> - Student: £50

I'm a fan of this too (and not just because I'm a fellow Pythonista). They use the same system for EuroPython, I've had one of each band as I've climbed up it over the last three years and it was all based on trust, nobody checked my student ID. It may be a little too complicated for this event but I think a corporate rate would at least be worth considering.

[Juozas]

Hi,

current plan is  £75 for a normal ticket,  £50 for student one.

100 normal ones, 30 students, 20 more to sponsors, organisers etc. leftovers as normal tickets.

However since we are not covering speakers' costs and our main expenditure is the venue, we are very likely to raise way more money that we actually need. Based on some estimates with these ticket prices we are going to raise at least  £10k, plus with sponsors we are looking total budget to be  £15k if not more. 

On the other hand, we only need about  £10k to cover all the costs. Thus I think we should be charging less for tickets, and I'm proposing  £50 normal,  £25 student. I just don't think over-raising cash from peoples' pockets make sense.

I know that we are going to be way less cheaper than others, but that is because we have great sponsors (or will have) and are working on a tight budget, not spending cash on things which are not important. 

My goal would be to leave this conference being in a loss, rather than in a profit, even if we spend the profit for a good cause like charity, which we will.

Thoughts?

P.S.

How do I get  £ with an american keyboard layout on Linux?

--
Juozas Kaziukėnas

[Dale Harvey]

Every person that I asked advice from said you should aim to cover your basic expenses with ticket sales, and use the sponsorship money to put on the extras

I would also be quite conservative about planning for unknown costs

That said its not my money on the line, and I do think its a good goal to be an affordable conference, I would be happy either way.

Cheers

Dale

[Juozas]

I agree, tickets at 50 rate just about cover the venue costs (+/-).

Not paying speakers' flights and hotels saves us insane amount of money though. Plus the conference social is going to be partly sponsored (for tasting), plus some cash put on a tab for free drinks.

I think I can make this happen with 50/25 tickets. If it happens that we can't find more sponsors, which I doubt but it can, I'm going to cover up the remaining part.

Juozas Kaziukėnas

[Paul Dragoonis]

I'm happy to lower the ticket costs to 50 if it mathematically makes sense.

Remember we need ~2000 to spare to incur anything that can come up.

Remember we don't get have quotes for the equipment for Room 1.
We also don't have a quote for the Wifi services.

Also what about the second day's facilities, has it been booked? what
facilities are there? what facilities do we want to have there.

I think things need to formulate and get more quotes before we
consider dropping the price.

- Paul.

[Aaron Bassett]

I've been in touch with Danny Helson from Informatics about using the forum for the second day.

He was out of the office yesterday, so if I haven't heard anything back by the end of the week I'll chase up.

cheers

Aaron

[Juozas]

Guys, I'm not organizing this alone. Less questions, more suggestions ;)

Juozas Kaziukėnas

On 08/02/12 13:25, Paul Dragoonis wrote:
> I'm happy to lower the ticket costs to 50 if it mathematically makes sense.
>
> Remember we need ~2000 to spare to incur anything that can come up.

True, I will be able to afford this

> Remember we don't get have quotes for the equipment for Room 1.

We do

> We also don't have a quote for the Wifi services.

Yes, mgdm is working on this

> Also what about the second day's facilities, has it been booked?

not yet, I assume it will be somewhere around 2-3k. Possibly informatics
forum can give it for free as it's a not for profit event. Some
co-working places should be able to help out too.

> what
> facilities are there? what facilities do we want to have there.

Wifi, tables, chairs. Informatics Forum will be great

> I think things need to formulate and get more quotes before we
> consider dropping the price.

Yes, that's why I keep sending emails that we need quotes and numbers. I
can't do everything

[Juozas]

Great, if he wants to meet to discuss this - we can do this.

Juozas Kaziukėnas

[Dale Harvey]

Danny Helson should be around tonight

[Aaron Bassett]

Fantastic I'll try and catch him after my talk then :)