On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 10:35:28AM +0000, Greg McCarroll said: > And that tradition has stuck and influenced LPW, and it isn't just for > moral reasons alone - if you run an event where nobody is profiting > you tend to get the goodwill of groups and people like Westminster > University (who have supported other open source events) and companies > like O'Reilly - apologies for skipping the full list of sponsors.
There's also another very good reason the LPW was free ... it was a lot easier that way. No need to set up a separate bank account, being free manages expectations (no coffee, food, tshirts or wifi - coffee and food potentially bringing extra health and safety regulation). Interestingly I did get people asking that it be more expensive to make it easier to justify to their bosses. Particularly at banking institutions. One way I got round that was to essentially sell them a "Platinum Sponsorship" deal or some other shennanigans ... the company "sponsors" for say 500 pounds, that goes straight behind the bar for the post conference social and as a reward for sponsoring the company gets 5 free places. Another thing we did was to get three banks to bring over a well known "Face" from the community. Each of the banks paid for a day of training and then the face did a free talk at LPW. We also all chipped in and paid for someone to come over once. I started writing up some thoughts about free conferences here many years ago http://thegestalt.org/simon/guerilla_conference_organising.txt never really finished them though.