I have beat my head against the attendance projections long enough now to realize that there is no formula based on the data we have collected about past FOSS4G events to predict future events. What I think works best is to take the top 20 countries and make three guesses for each about how many people are likely to attend: low, mid and high. The low being near the low end of that country's attendance history, the mid being near the average (unless their is a definite upward trend), and the high being near that country's highest attendance. I did not make allowances for downward trends due to the recent economic factors. The host country would contribute 50%-60% of the attendance. Fortunately, I had a high US attendance in Victoria to provide some confidence.<div>
<br></div><div>My guess for attendance at FOSS4G 2011 in Denver is:</div><div><br></div><div>Low: 426</div><div>Mid: 839</div><div>High: 1431 (capped at 1200)</div><div><br></div><div>Brady Forrest, who organizes the Where 2.0 conference for O'Reilly and has attended FOSS4G in the past, said he thinks we should expect the same number as Victoria, plus or minus 100 (621-821). That bears out with my guesstimate. We do have a wildcard with access to the GITA members who are not traditionally FOSS4G attendees.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Does anyone have any other input?</div><div><br></div><div>I have also been working on "attendee profiles" to help GITA put together their bid requests from the venues. I did not think it was fair to create a single attendee profile for FOSS4G as it's a diverse conference. The breakdown of these attendees is important because we need to be able to estimate how many people will stay in the conference hotel. It is typical in the US for many venue costs to be eliminated based on the number of people staying in the hotel. Please see the Wiki: <a href="http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G_2011_Denver_Attendance_Projections">http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G_2011_Denver_Attendance_Projections</a></div>
<div><br></div><div>-Eric</div><div><br clear="all">-=--=---=----=----=---=--=-=--=---=----=---=--=-=-<br>Eric B. Wolf New! 720-334-7734<br>USGS Geographer<br>Center of Excellence in GIScience<br>PhD Student <br>
CU-Boulder - Geography<br><br>GPG Public Key: <a href="http://www.h4h.net/ebwolf.public.key.txt">http://www.h4h.net/ebwolf.public.key.txt</a><br>
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