An outside view on this;
Start with a cost profile that matches what the Foundation is willing
to spend out-of-pocket for a free-of-charge conference. With that
starting point, fundraising side will try to raise that money, and the
producer side need to keep within that budget.
Producer side should leverage free premises (Universities, Incubators,
Corporate or Government facilities, ++) and keep spending to a
minimum, such as keep the conference in the same place for several
years in a row, near where we have plenty of volunteers so we don't
have expenses on producers' air tickets and lodging. No food given to
attendees, but need ability to purchase nearby enough.
Fund raising; booths and advertisements are the traditional funding
options, but how about brain storming less common ideas;
* "paid-for presenter track(s)" for companies to promote whatever
they want, which should sell for at least $1000/hr.
* "Recruitment Hall" where companies can freely try to recruit
people without feeling ashamed. Big companies pay a fortune to
recruitment agencies (20-30% of first annual salary)
* "Bug Bounty Board" an auction site for fixing bugs
collaboratively in Hackathon.
* Project training. Are there any projects that would volunteer
enough time for quality training?
I am sure our collective minds can come up with more and better ideas.
What I would like to stop "attendance fee" and have a "appreciation
gift" (from attendee to ASF) for those that feel charitable.
Ideal locations should also have a vibrant software industry. My
friend at Foo Cafe[1] in Malmo (300+ events per year, i.e. every
evening) recommends that there needs to be at least 100 software
companies in the region, and that the marketing needs to reach 1000
people. Many major cities in Europe and USA will fall into this, and
many of our volunteers are likely to live in such regions.
Finally, my personal reflection on conferences in general; The more
F2F time with other people, the more valuable the conference. Just
running around listening to presentations is not that meaningful. If
the producer can assist in getting people with similar interests into
the proximity of each other, then that would be great, "DevOps
cluster", "Big Data pond", "Embedded box", "UI/UX panel", "Protocol
buffer" and other funny 'zones' perhaps around water coolers with a
white board.
[1] http://foocafe.se/global/events
Cheers & HTH
On Tue, Nov 14, 2017 at 12:49 AM, Rich Bowen <rbo...@rcbowen.com
<mailto:rbo...@rcbowen.com>> wrote:
Then perhaps I need to rephrase my question. The question is
specifically how much the board would be willing to lose on this
on an annual basis.
On Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 10:39 Chris Mattmann <mattm...@apache.org
<mailto:mattm...@apache.org>> wrote:
I wasn’t suggesting it was one of your goals, just an
indicator that we may not
see the $$$ you said would (hopefully) be returned,
considering that in order to
do that we at least need to break even, but LF’s experience
per your reports was
that they lost money on the event.
Cheers,
Chris
*From: *Rich Bowen <rbo...@rcbowen.com
<mailto:rbo...@rcbowen.com>>
*Reply-To: *"bo...@apache.org <mailto:bo...@apache.org>"
<bo...@apache.org <mailto:bo...@apache.org>>
*Date: *Monday, November 13, 2017 at 8:36 AM
*To: *"operati...@apache.org <mailto:operati...@apache.org>"
<operati...@apache.org <mailto:operati...@apache.org>>
*Cc: *president President <presid...@apache.org
<mailto:presid...@apache.org>>, "e...@apache.org
<mailto:e...@apache.org>" <e...@apache.org
<mailto:e...@apache.org>>, ASF Board <bo...@apache.org
<mailto:bo...@apache.org>>
*Subject: *Re: ApacheCon 2018
I'm not investing in profit. I'm investing in people and in
the future of the foundation. Making money is not one of my
goals.
On Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 10:21 Chris Mattmann
<mattm...@apache.org <mailto:mattm...@apache.org>> wrote:
Hi Rich,
For me at least looking at the reason that LF did not want
to continue on as a sponsor
which was at least partially due IIRC to the inability to
break even, and because they
continued to lose money on the event does not suggest to
me a strong basis for such
an investment at least in my opinion.
I understand where you are coming from and what you are
trying to do though.
Cheers,
Chris
*From: *Rich Bowen <rbo...@rcbowen.com
<mailto:rbo...@rcbowen.com>>
*Reply-To: *<operati...@apache.org
<mailto:operati...@apache.org>>
*Date: *Monday, November 13, 2017 at 7:16 AM
*To: *president President <presid...@apache.org
<mailto:presid...@apache.org>>, "e...@apache.org
<mailto:e...@apache.org>" <e...@apache.org
<mailto:e...@apache.org>>, "operati...@apache.org
<mailto:operati...@apache.org>" <operati...@apache.org
<mailto:operati...@apache.org>>, ASF Board
<bo...@apache.org <mailto:bo...@apache.org>>
*Subject: *ApacheCon 2018
I have been speaking with Ruth Suehle about ApacheCon. She
has been running Flock - https://flocktofedora.org/ - for
some years, and has some ideas of how to run low-cost
community events, and find venues for them. Flock is a
free event - I'm not promising or even suggesting that
ApacheCon should be free, but I'm hoping for much lower
cost. (Ruth is also a colleague at Red Hat, and I have
worked with her on many events. She's good at this stuff.)
One of the things we'll need, though, for this model, is
an up-front investment in the event, which would then -
hopefully, be returned, all or most, by a successful
event. I'm not looking to make a profit, necessarily, but
to break even.
What I need to determine is whether the board would be
willing to front $50-100k for an event, and potentially
lose some of that investment. And, if so, what that number
would be. That information would enable me to continue
this avenue of discussion - or determine that it's a
non-starter. This is, obviously, a change from my
anticipated event budget for 2018. I don't view it as an
expense, so much as an investment that we hope to recover.
But of course the potential exists that we'd not recover it.
Please note that this is, of course, ASF confidential. I'd
like to have something to announce before we make any kind
of public statement, and lots of people contacting me for
details and speculation just complicates things. I'm
working on an intermediate message with Sally, but would
like to have a plan (or at least a "plan for a plan") by
the end of the year.
Rich, VP Conferences
--
Niclas Hedhman, Software Developer
http://polygene.apache.org - New Energy for Java
