[OSGeo-Conf] Invitation to hear your wisdom about FOSS4G 2015

Wed Sep 23 16:49:28 PDT 2015

Hey Everyone,

Just a quick obvious comment.. it is pretty interesting that the pattern 
seems to be the same year after year.

I may be wrong, but thinking about it, there may be a who-else-is-going 
factor. Once people hear others they like/respect/want to talk to will 
be there, they sign up too. Giving people the option to let others know 
they're attending, in addition to social media & person to person, might 
be beneficial.

A

On 23/09/15 18:40, Eli Adam wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 3:23 PM, Cameron Shorter
> <cameron.shorter at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I really like ideas being floated about explaining the value of early
>> registration, and providing extra non-financial rewards to attract early
>> registration.
>>
>> Maybe even have a way for people to provide an early indication that they
>> plan to come, but the payment is in the company payment system. Eg: Pay $20
>> reservation by (early bird + X weeks). (We expect this will be covered
>> personally). The $20 will provide you with preferential treatment to
>> accommodation, t-shirt, workshop, whatever we decide to offer these people.
>> Later, the person's employer will pay the conference attendance. This will
>> give organisations an early indication of expected number of attendees.
>>
>> I've updated the graph of the Seoul metrics further to break out
>> international and local registrations.
>> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BpkO5WOFQ_DZEWNMLj_hAhEre0m0io_j-JGf7geAW5Y/edit#gid=57
>>
>> International registrations spike during early bird, then slowly but
>> steadily increased. This is in line with metrics from prior conferences.
>> Local registrations spike about a month before the event. It appears there
>> was a successful publicity campaign or similar resulting in lots of
>> registrations? Maybe the LOC can enlighten us.
>> For prior years, where we have metrics for local attendees, we do see many
>> late local registrations, although Seoul appears to have had an unusually
>> late spike.
> For 2014 in Portland, email blasts, blog posts, and some other
> publicity actions each gave our registrations noticeable increases.
> Darrell or someone else on the LOC who was paying attention to
> registrations might have a better idea and more information.  Mostly I
> was working with a few others generating and sending emails and not
> paying attention to registrations other than Darrell would say that
> the emails work and to do another.
>
> Eli
>
>> Cheers, Cameron
>>
>>
>> On 23/09/2015 5:06 am, Gert-Jan van der Weijden - Stichting OSGeo.nl wrote:
>>> Three more thoughts:
>>> 1. For SME's (and larger companies) it might be useful to make 1 or more
>>> non-personal reservations.
>>> A lot of SME's know long in advance that they will send 1, 2 or even 3
>>> three
>>> participants to FOSS4G, but will decide just shortly before the conference
>>> who exactly these 1,2, 3 lucky ones are.
>>>
>>> 2. Explain to the audience why we use the early bird discount principle.
>>> That might persuade people to register early. Not because of the discount
>>> itself, but because of the "kickstarter-like" idea behind it.
>>>
>>> 3. Let participant explain (on the registration form) how they heard about
>>> FOSS4G. That's during the registration months already valuable for
>>> FOSS4G-2016 itself, and of course also for next FOSS4Gs.
>>>
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>>
>>> Gert-Jan
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
>>> Van: conference_dev-bounces at lists.osgeo.org
>>> [mailto:conference_dev-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] Namens Gert-Jan van der
>>> Weijden
>>> Verzonden: dinsdag 22 september 2015 16:03
>>> Aan: conference_dev at lists.osgeo.org
>>> Onderwerp: Re: [OSGeo-Conf] Invitation to hear your wisdom about FOSS4G
>>> 2015
>>>
>>> Same goes for the BaseCamp hostel: a lot of peeple seem very enthousiast
>>> about this wonderful place to stay, and the number of places (120) here is
>>> limited as well (although I realize it's a bit complicated to make a
>>> package
>>> deal of the FOSS4G registration and the BaseCamp registration)
>>>
>>>
>>> I also like Steven's suggestion to do a "buy 2, get 1 extra for half
>>> price"
>>> discount (or similar "enterprise-discounts").
>>>
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>>
>>>
>>> Gert-Jan
>>>
>>>
>>> Steven Feldman <shfeldman at gmail.com> schreef:
>>>
>>>> Good idea
>>>> ______
>>>> Steven
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> On 22 Sep 2015, at 12:58, b.j.kobben at utwente.nl wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>>
>>>>> Seeing that workshops are usually popular, and place is actually
>>>>> limited, this seems to me an obvious candidate for getting people in
>>> early.
>>>>> Something like "discounted workshops if booking before date x", or
>>>>> "popular workshop y only available for early bookers"...
>>>>>
>>>>> Barend
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Barend Köbben
>>>>> Senior Lecturer  ITC-University of Twente PO Box 217, 7500 AE
>>>>> Enschede (Netherlands) @barendkobben http://www.itc.nl/geoinformatics
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 22-09-15 13:33, "till.adams at fossgis.de" <till.adams at fossgis.de>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Hi Steven,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> your thoughts were exact ours ;-)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The idea with the special benefit is the one that also came to my mind.
>>>>>> We'll think about that - I think we are planning lots of
>>>>>> side-activities, so thism ight be a suitable way.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Regards, Till
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Am 2015-09-22 13:10, schrieb Steven Feldman:
>>>>>>> The challenge is to provide some real incentives for early
>>>>>>> registration - price seems the obvious one but it creates 2
>>>>>>> problems either you discount price levels to such a low level that
>>>>>>> you might lose money on early bird delegates or you artificially
>>>>>>> increase the price of non early birds to create the differential
>>>>>>> and discourage late bookers. Neither is ideal.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> One lesson from both past FOSS4Gs and other events is not to extend
>>>>>>> the early bird deadline, this results in a loss of confidence in
>>>>>>> any limited offers and encourages the expectation that there will
>>>>>>> be further extensions so there is no need to book early. If an
>>>>>>> event needs to offer an incentive after the early bird has expired
>>>>>>> there are several other ways to offer a similar (but slightly
>>>>>>> smaller discount) e.g. book for 2 or more delegates and get x%
>>>>>>> discount off second delegate
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Maybe a better option is to offer some other benefits to early birds?
>>>>>>> Limited t-shirt? A free day of workshops? Privileged access to
>>>>>>> something?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> ______
>>>>>>> Steven
>>>>>>>
>>> Gert-Jan van der Weijden
>>> Voorzitter Stichting OSGeo.nl
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> Conference_dev at lists.osgeo.org
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>>>
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>>
>> --
>> Cameron Shorter,
>> Software and Data Solutions Manager
>> LISAsoft
>> Suite 112, Jones Bay Wharf,
>> 26 - 32 Pirrama Rd, Pyrmont NSW 2009
>>
>> P +61 2 9009 5000,  W www.lisasoft.com,  F +61 2 9009 5099
>>

-- 
*Andrew Ross*
Director, Ecosystem Development, Eclipse Foundation <http://eclipse.org>
Twitter: @42aross <http://twitter.com/42aross>, Mobile: 1-613-614-5772
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