[Foss4g2008loc] conference numbers

[Paul Ramsey]

I concur with Dave. I think 200 Far Far Away delegates is achievable,  
based on the positive fact that we will be drawing from both North  
America and Europe and the negative fact of perceived distance.  2006  
had 90 delegates from North America, 2007 had 139 from Europe.

I have a related concern on workshops and presentations, on whether  
the distance factor is going to substantially suppress the amount of  
of participation and abstract submissions.  As someone pointed out,  
the conference doesn't exist without content, and we depend on our  
presenters to provide that content gratis (not only gratis, we expect  
them to pay to get in! :)

P.

On 7-Nov-07, at 7:27 AM, Dave McIlhagga wrote:

> A quick gut feel from me on the "outside Africa" contingent would  
> be to budget on a base of 200 attendees. Hopefully it will be more  
> - but I'd be hesitant to budget on it.
>
> At FOSS4G2007 -- I believe there was less than 200 from outside  
> Canada/US. So given equivalent distance or more for folks to travel  
> to South Africa from outside Africa -- that would seem a reasonable  
> number to expect this time around.
>
> Dave
>
>
>
> On 7-Nov-07, at 10:02 AM, Carrin Martin wrote:
>
>> Hi
>>
>> someone raised a point that I think we need to explore - the  
>> likely number of delegates as that is going to affect the  
>> registration fee.
>>
>> our thinking was - although we anticipate between 800 and 1000, we  
>> need a 'break even' number.
>> if we set that at a minimum of 600 delegates made up of:
>> 200 from SA (hopefully we will get more)
>> 200 from the rest of Africa - we had the international ICA  
>> conference in 2005 and had 200 African delegates
>> 200 from the rest of the world - our concern is the high cost of  
>> flights but we need to be advised and I'm sure that there will be  
>> more
>>
>> this has implications for registration:
>> I see the Canadian $1 = R7.1
>> if we work on the R3 000 000.00 that I propose (excluding the  
>> exhibition area and workshops) and divide that by 600 = R5000 per  
>> person ($704)
>> or divide it by 700 = R4290 per person ($604)
>> now its getting manageable.
>>
>> if we work on 50% registering before and the rest after, we can  
>> lower the early to R3800 (4290-490) ($535) and add the 490 to the  
>> R4290 for the late = R4780 ($673).
>> That makes it comparable to the 2007 conference as per the http:// 
>> www.foss4g2007.org/register/ web site.  The site does not indicate  
>> whether these are early or late reg fees.
>>
>> The cost of the computers and space is R524 000.00 divided by 1600  
>> people (200 people x 8 workshops?) = R328 ($46) per workshop.  
>> Someone needs to check my figures, it seems a bit low.
>> This covers the cost for the labs as well for the 5 days, but we  
>> could have an extra workshop every morning to increase the number  
>> of workshops. Or we could increase the cost of the workshops to  
>> subsidise the cost of registration.  I was under the impression  
>> that the demand for workshops was high and we would need to  
>> increase the numbers.  I can contact the local university if we  
>> need extra for both Monday and Friday.  I think their rate is  
>> around R100 per day per computer.
>>
>> Charging R500 ($70) for each of the 8 workshop (x 1600 people)  
>> give us an extra R275 000 which we could deduct off the cost of  
>> the full conference, and take the R3 000 000.00 down to R2 725 000  
>> which would be R3929 ($551) per delegate with 700 people -  as  
>> opposed to the R4290 ($604).   I see that the 2007 workshops cost  
>> was $300 and I'm not sure if this is per workshop or for the full  
>> day.
>>
>> My concerns are:
>> 1. I'm not clear how the current figure have been reached.
>> 2. please will the OSGeo folk give some thought to the number of  
>> people they think we can expect from outside of Africa
>> 3. The conference costs are not going to change, but we need to  
>> find a way of sorting out the separate costs to make sure that we  
>> do not incur any losses.
>>
>> cheers
>> Carrin Martin
>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
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