Il giorno 18/gen/2012, alle ore 00:13, Douglas Napoleone ha scritto: > On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 4:01 PM, Fabio Pliger <fabio.pli...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> >> 2012/1/17 Giovanni Bajo <ra...@develer.com> >>> >>> >>>>> >>>>> _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. > > This is a very hard balance to make, and depends largely on the > Sponsorship level available. For PyCon US we created a 'Corporate' > level of registration which we do not take a loss on, while all other > levels of registration represent a loss for the conference. We have a > substantial contingent of corporate attendance. That is it is the > corporations which are paying for their employees to attend, and they > can afford to spend a bit more to subsidize the conference for > everyone else. EuroPython does the same thing, but the differential > between the levels is higher for PyCon US (if my exchange rate math is > correct). In the end we have Corporate, Hobbiest, and Student rates, > and we try to have a good mix between them to keep that section of the > budget sheet balanced.
EP UK was far more aggressive in its corporate rate, and it ended up selling an incredible small number of corporate tickets. We were actually baffled at it when we saw the numbers, since they totally didn't match our past experience with PyCon Italy in proportion between students/hobbists/corporate, so we decided to level the prices a bit more. It worked out quite well, since we sold lots more corporate tickets compared to EP UK (in proportion to the total amount of tickets sold). My understanding is that, beyond some point, companies will just ask employees to buy tickets as hobbists and then give money to them as "expenses" or something like that. In previous PyCon Italy conferences, we had some tax-deduction trick to leverage to prevent companies from adopting this "workaround", but our accountant told us that the same tricks wouldn't work at the EU level. So yes, we can probably raise the corporate level a bit, and the hobbist rate as well, but it can't be pushed too far since it's not worked out in the past. > The Grant money then comes from the sponsorship pool. The better the > sponsorship, the more we can grant. The key here is that each free > registration costs the conference more than the opportunity loss, due > to the attendance cap, so the budget projections get messy. That is in > the budget, we allocate how many free registrations we expect to give > out, and then subtract that from the projected registration revenue in > the budget, so each grant registration really costs closer to 2 > registrations on our P&L sheet. In the end it is just book keeping, > but it can make your head hurt. Having a good system for managing your > budget, and staying on top of it is critical. We use a Google Spreadsheet to handle our budget. We do keep it updated daily/weekly with quotes, confirmed expenses, projects, hypothesis, hopes and what not. We simulate different scenarios as time goes by, and we use all these numbers to make decisions. I believe we're quite on top of it. We did have the same issue with grants being a "double loss" in a way, due to the attendance cap, and it's a damn tricky issue to handle, especially as (late, pricey) registrations continue to flow. >>>> 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. > This has been discussed at both the organizers list, and switching my > hats, at the PSF board level as well. The accounting makes it neigh > impossible to pool the sponsorship inflow. As you say, we can only > really have the money that is feed into the PSF via PyCon and other > sources, back out to other non-profits like EuroPython, PyCon AU, and > all the other conferences via sponsorship packages from those > conferences. If we want to try the sponsorship pack approach, I don't think you (PSF) need to handle the money flow. Once a sponsor agrees to buy a US+EU pack, attracted for instance by a volume discount, it's totally fine if you (PSF) invoice the US part of it, and we will invoice the EU part of it later in the year. So I don't think there's an accounting issue here. I know that PSF has always helped EuroPython with extra funds, but it's just not the same thing. I'm talking of leveraging the sponsorship contacts for doing volume discounts and attract more sponsors from US to EU. That might possibly end up generating a far larger revenue flow than the few Ks of extra budget that the PSF can allocate for EuroPython (which is **really** important and appreciated support, but it's a different issue). >> 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. > This is a very sticky issue, which there have been many conversations > on. I will let Jesse Noller address this. Some private communications > with the relevant people on the EuroPython end is most likely the best > channel for this. Fabio, Francesco and myself handle most of the sponsorship contacts. We would happy to discuss this issue with Jesse off-list. > lt;dr : up the ante on the Expo Hall. Cater to sponsors 1:1, make them > part of the conference, not just a sponsor. Parse Error... :) Can you please clarify? > Have a form of 'grants' > for small companies as well as attendees. [...] > For small companies which can not attend but would like to, ask why > they can not attend, and try to get them there anyway. For small > startups we have Startup Row, where we basically give a grant for the > startup to attend. This gives the startup exposure, and also helps > balance out against some of the more corporate sponsors in the Hall. This is something that we've been asked in the past and we will tackle this year. I think it works proportionally much better in US where there's a vibrant world of small startups with small marketing funds, but it costs nothing to try. > This is never easy, and I know we have turned down some very large > amounts of money because we would not give out attendee information, > or share information about our other sponsors, or compromised the 'no > special treatment, everybody pays' rules. It is much, much more hands > on work, talking ad nauseum to the sponsors creating a rapport that > goes well beyond sponsorship. But over the years this has paid off in > spades. It is about the long haul. Jesse Noller spends about 15 hours > a week on new sponsorship, and that does not count the work once he > has gotten the sponsor, nor the years of ground work that Van Lindberg > put in. He started working on sponsorship for 2012 AT the 2011 > conference last year and has not stopped since. He worked with Van > before that to pass the torch. Thankfully his employer agreed to pay > him to work part time on PyCon. As I said, I don't think we have a specific sponsorship problem to solve; we have done €60K of sponsorships last year which was OK for our budget and we managed to end up with some sort of agreement with most of the sponsors that approached us. The only thing that does look strange is the disproportion in number of sponsors between the two conferences, and even stranger the amount of money that companies (the *same* companies) seem willing to pay to become a sponsor. This is why I'm specifically interested in the US+EU pack approach. > I do not believe EuroPython needs this level of effort. We have worked > up to this level over the past 4-5 years as the conference has grown > to require it. Nor do I believe EuroPython is at some tipping point, > at some great risk, as some of the comments give the impression. It > may require staying in one location for an additional year to shore > things up, and get the foundation built to the next level, but even > that I am not convinced of. We had a similar issue back in 2006/2007 > where we had gotten to the size that we needed to think more than 1-2 > years in the future, and we were less than a year out from the next > conference. We put out the call, and people stepped up. We planned 4 > years in advance, and got it done. The Montreal group put together a > fantastic bid last year and we are set through 2015. Sounding the > alarm is important, but now that it has been sounded, I expect people > will rally. I detailed more of my doubts in my other email about this topic. -- Giovanni Bajo :: ra...@develer.com Develer S.r.l. :: http://www.develer.com My Blog: http://giovanni.bajo.it
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