BoostCon Planners,
tl;dr Would you like to see the Boost Community Dinner at CppCon be held as a buffet in the Meydenbauer? When talking about the Boost presence at CppCon, I try to tread lightly because of my obvious conflict of interests. Boost is a very important part of the C++ community that CppCon serves and it should have a presence. But I try to tread this line very careful because of my roles in both organizations. Boost isn’t even a community sponsor of CppCon. (That may be because the condition of community sponsorship is to exchange logos and links on the website and I only recently got a link to C++Now on the boost.org website. If it is that hard to get boost.org to link to BoostCon—and without a logo, yet—then how can we have a logo exchange with CppCon?) We’ve had a Boost Community Dinner at every CppCon. These were never official CppCon events. They were planned and organized by CppCon staff, but no CppCon funds went toward the events. What we did was announce the event on various Boost/C++Now lists and take RSVPs. Then we arranged for an event of that size. This has, in general, not worked out very well. We always get more people to show up than RSVP. Last year we had so few RSVPs relative to our guarantee, that we kind of panicked and sent out the word to “bring a friend.” This resulted in a way too many people and chaos ensued. By the time people paid their checks, it was about 21:30, meaning that everyone missed the evening session. My bad on that. I brought up the issue to our contact at VisitBellevue (who represents the city’s tourism interest) and this resulted in the Meydenbauer making us an offer that is more reasonably priced than any previous dining offer. Here is how it would work. · We’ll add a new ticket to EventBrite registration for the Boost Community Dinner. · We’ll promote it on the usually Boost/C++Now mailing lists (and probably to registered CppCon attendees). · It would probably be on Thursday at 18:45. · It would probably cost about $40-$45. · There would be a cash bar, but soft drinks would probably be included. · We’d have to stop selling tickets about two to three weeks before the event because we need to let the Meydenbauer know our final number. · It would be at the Meydenbauer so we don’t need to worry about directions or time and transportation to some other venue. · It would be a buffet and paid in advance, so people can leave to go to evening sessions (starting at 20:30) at any time. Unlike our previous events, this one would involve CppCon funds because the conference would collect the funds through Eventbrite and then pay for the dinner. The goal would be to make the event revenue neutral, but if soft drinks are offered free, then we can only guess what the cost will be. Comments? If you are planning to attend CppCon, does this appeal to you? Do you think this is good for the Boost/C++Now community? Jon -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "boostcon-plan" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to boostcon-plan+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
