2012/1/17 Giovanni Bajo <[email protected]> > > > > > > > _Note:_ I'm not including tickets revenue in this consideration as we > decided > > > that we wanted a conference affordable to everybody keeping the prices > as low > > > as we could. Thus tickets average revenue was almost 0. > > > > I think there's still some room to ramp up the tickets prices in > > order to make the budget look healthier. EuroPython is the second > > most important Python conference we have, right after PyCon US, > > so you can safely use their (low) prices are guideline: > > > > https://us.pycon.org/2012/registration/ > > > > Capping the number of attendees as you've done in 2011 and starting > > registration early is also a good way to make you feel more secure about > > the numbers. > > Ticket price is always a hard call :) > > Since we've sold out in 2011, and most people seem to be very satisfied > with the event, I think that it would sound reasonable to increase > prices, since we might expect more people willing to come, and at the > same time we can't really host 1000 people in the venue anyway (as much > as we would like to). > > On the other hand, I like the idea of keeping the price low and > affordable for everybody, but maybe we should probably work more on > grants to help that side of the problem. I actually like the PyCon US > model of "everybody pays and everybody can ask for a grant", but I'm > split about it. >
I do agree that it's hard take decisions on this. My heart says to keep prices low (at least for students) but... my mind disagrees. Probably we should apply more of the Pycon US model on Europython. > > > I also wonder how we could help in getting the number of sponsors > > bumped up to higher levels. > > One thing that really strikes us as very odd is that there is a large > difference in the amount of money that companies seem willing to invest, > compared to PyCon US. This is especially glaring when it happens to be > the *same* companies investing something like five times more in PyCon > US compared to EuroPython. > > I think that part of this can be justified with the USA being sort of > the core of technology in these days, so it might be that the total > amount of business being done in USA is so larger than Europe that it > reflects also in our sponsorships; moreover, for recruiting, it might be > easier for company to recruit among developers living in a single > country (USA) rather than living across several different countries > (Europe). > > So I think the first thing that would help is that the PSF could push > EuroPython sponsorships packs to PyCon USA sponsors. We might be still > in time for this, but I think it would work better if EuroPython > sponsorships were proposed together with PyCon US sponsorship; like "buy > this pack and with X% extra you can be present in Europe as well". Food > for thought for next year. > I've thought about it many many times and everytime I end up not finding a satisfying solution for this topic. I'd really love to find a solution for this but at the moment we couldn't do this ( i guess ). Let me clarify. Europython is organized by non profit associations ( Python Italia, Pycon UK, etc.. ) that reinvest any profit to next year conference edition. Pycon, on the other hand, is organized by the PSF and the conference profits ( and losses ) go to the PSF. Pycon is one of the most important economic resources for the PSF as well. Pycon US and the PSF are tied together. The PSF then uses the money from Pycon to help other python conferences and communities with grants and sponsorships ( just like it did for Europython and all the other Pycons around the world ). With these premises, how can we find a way to build up sponsorship packs among both conferences? I'm CCing this email to Jesse Noller who can speak for Pycon organizers team on this. One consideration has to be done. With the Pycon sponsors stack overflow this year it'd be a good occasion to take contacts with those sponsors that didn't come in time. > > > A lot of companies are looking for Python > > developers, so recruiting is certainly one of the key arguments for > > sponsors to invest in EuroPython. > > Recruiting works very well; our sponsorship packs are divided by > sponsorship goals instead of being raising levels, and the recruiting > packs are surely very popular. > > We did a recruiting session, and we got very positive feedback from the > companies that joined it (both immediately at the event and afterwards), > but maybe there's something more we can do for facilitate recruiting? > > > Another is product announcements > > and presentation. Perhaps you could make those two aspects (even) more > > interesting for sponsors in order to attract more sponsors. > > Another argument I often hear from smaller companies is that > > manning a booth at the conference is too costly for them > > (not because of the booth signup fee, but because of the > > staffing costs). Perhaps having a poster session or some > > flat panel LCDs in the conference halls for unmanned > > presentation would help make sponsoring more interesting to > > those companies ?! > > Yes, that's an idea. For companies that can't join the conference we > usually suggest to prepare a brochure for the conference bag, but maybe > the poster session is something we should attempt (for both sponsors and > regular partecipants). > > +1 -- Fabio Pliger *linkedin* http://it.linkedin.com/in/fabiopliger *twitter* http://twitter.com/b_smoke
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