I've been surprised at the low prices at Wikimania in Hongkong.
When I attend scientific conferences, the conference fee is
typically a few hundred Euro (or Dollar), usually enough to
cover the full cost of the conference. That said, these
conferences are often organised ad-hoc, or within a very small
scientific organisation without much external funding. Moreover,
the fees are not really paid by the attendees, but rather by
universities or research grants.
I found the low price for Wikimania a very positive thing.
On the other hand, I would prefer to have a tighter, more
focussed, and better structured program. Breaks should
be breaks, sessions should be strictly time-boxed, session
chairs should be in control of timing, and maybe the rate
of acceptance of talks should be stricter. While I
like the bazaar-like atmosphere, it made it very hard to
get to talks in time, and very frustrating for speakers
who had to deal with large audience fluctuations much of
the time.
Bye,
Stephan
On 23 Mar 2014, at 09:44, Samuel Klein <meta...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 23, 2014 at 4:04 AM, Michael Snow <wikipe...@frontier.com> wrote:
>> On 3/23/2014 12:47 AM, Samuel Klein wrote:
>>>>
>>>> listing higher ticket prices is a major deterrent to attending.
>>>
>>> Worth exploring with data: what inspires or deters attendance. That
>>> may be affected by all of: the various prices listed, the difference
>>> between the high and low prices listed, presentation of other options,
>>> banner text used, &c.
>>
>> Okay, but we should look for existing knowledge and research related to the
>> subject to begin with. Answers for Wikimania ticket pricing are not as
>> straightforward to determine by A/B testing as fundraising approaches. The
>> population involved is a much smaller sample, motivating factors may be more
>> diverse, and the impact on the test subjects perhaps a little too personal
>> for that to be appropriate.
>
> Very true. Worth exploring with research, and gathering passive data
> on current behavior, for a start.
>
> (We do currently show the Wikimania banners to 100M+ readers, I
> believe, so we have a large sample at that level.)
>
> SJ
>
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--
-------------------------- It can be done! ---------------------------------
Please email me as sch...@eprover.org (Stephan Schulz)
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