Mark, Price came up on talk-ie and I responded there. I've copied the reply below.
The scholarship fund is open to applicants until the 21 May. Feel free to use it as that is what it's their for. Applicants will be judged by a team based on the answers provided (questions focus on topics such as commitment to OSM). See recent post on blog.OpenStreetMap.org Best, Rob ------ Martín, Thanks for the feedback. We do a lot to try to keep costs down but we can always do more. The main way we can get costs down is through sponsorship and, if you have any ideas, we'd welcome your support. We can also scale back our scholarship programme but we hope that at 2-4% of attendees we have struck a good balance. In terms of current situation: 1. We have a scholarship fund in place to help with costs. Feel free to apply to that. 2. At 75 EUR tickets are sold at a loss compared to variable costs alone. When you add in fixed costs the loss per ticket is much bigger. We can do this because of sponsorship. 3. Our price is in line with SotM 2013 and 5 EUR less than SotM US 2015. 4. The hotel deal is available to try to keep accommodation costs down. 5. We welcome anyone with contacts to airlines to come forward but can't arrange any deals with them as is. Once again sorry that we can't get to the price level you want. Please apply to the scholarship fund and send in sponsorship leads. Thanks, Rob
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