[Foss4g2009] Numbers for foss4g2008?

[Gavin Fleming]

Our revised forecast for registrants is 500 (410 today and climbing about 10 per day at the moment). We've been expecting a last minute surge and it seems (I hope) this is the start of it.
 
We did a major budget trim in April to be really conservative, ensuring we would break even if we got only around 350, so have been able to handle some extra items and cost increases now. 
 
Being far away from nearly everything we found it difficult to attract big sponsorship early on like 2007 but we've attracted around R900 000 at this point from sponsors and exhibitors (26 stalls sold so far). 
 
Registration fees are well below what OSGeo requested (cap at US$600) but it seems to be mainly the distance and flights that are cramping international attendance, and probably the world economic slowdown generally, although we have registrants from around 50 countries. I don't have the actual breakdown at hand. And we have a lot (the majority?) of the top FOSS GIS names participating, as well as (to me) astounding international interest in participation (labs, workshops and presentations). I'm very proud of the content and the package we now have on offer and wish 1000 delegates would pour in!  We had grand ideas of 800 and chose a venue that could easily handle 1000, paying a premium for it. My guess is Sydney's going to be in the same boat. 
 
Let no-one kid you about how much work you've got yourself into :-) 
 
Gavin 

________________________________

From: foss4g2009-bounces at lists.osgeo.org on behalf of Cameron Shorter
Sent: Sat 8/30/2008 09:03 AM
To: Gavin Fleming; Janelle Driscoll; Denisa Adamova; foss4g2009
Subject: [Foss4g2009] Numbers for foss4g2008?



Gavin,
I'm guessing you will be starting to get a feeling for the number of
people coming to foss4g2008?

I'm very keen to get an understanding for how many people have come, and
if you have it, where they have come from. Could we please get access to
these.

We are about to make venue decisions for Sydney in the next week, and
I'd like to use South Africa as a gauge for likely number of delegates
for foss4g2009.

--
Cameron Shorter
Geospatial Systems Architect
Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254

Think Globally, Fix Locally
Commercial Support for Geospatial Open Source Solutions
http://www.lisasoft.com/LISAsoft/SupportedProducts.html

_______________________________________________
Foss4g2009 mailing list
Foss4g2009 at lists.osgeo.org
http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/foss4g2009


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/foss4g2009/attachments/20080904/428b926f/attachment.html