[EuroPython] Budget team

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Laura Creighton wrote:
>>I think you are seriously underestimating the value of
>>a booth here. Note that the costs for the booth must cover
>>the extra charges we have for security, insurance, material
>>and organization. I doubt that EUR 200 would cover these for
>>three days and two nights.
> 
> 
> You must accurately measure the costs of providing booths.  Then you
> must not charge less than it costs. That is a given.

Certainly.

>>Even though we are not in this for the money, the booth
>>fees provide us with one of the very few ways to raise
>>upfront money to leverage risk and secure the budget.
> 
> 
> But businesses are not amateurs.  Thus when I pay 700 EUR for a booth
> I am saying that I am getting more than 700 EUR worth of publicity, 
> advertising, and eyeballs.  This is not measured in blue-sky, what-if,
> I have a good feeling, whatever my neighborus did I can do as well, sort
> of hobbyist thinking -- this is what a Marketing department does 
> professionally.
> 
> I went to my Managing Director (what Americans call CEOs), to ask him
> what the AB Strakt Marketting Department thinks a hacker eyeball is
> worth.  .50 - 1 Euro.  We are willing to pay some more for publicity,
> but not one hell of a lot, because we think that in the hacker community
> we are already pretty well known.

If that's so, then we might as well drop the whole idea
and save us a lot of hassles (getting insurance, guards, etc.).

At EUR 200 per booth this simply doesn't work out and is too
much of a risk to take:

I don't know if anyone of you has revisited the spreadsheet
published by Nicolas on the budget team wiki page. Looking
at that spreadsheet, he estimates the costs at EUR 65.000,00 and
his cost estimates seem very reasonable. Note that he estimates the
number of attendees at 425 total, which I think is a bit high (this
includes 125 non-paying attendees).

Taking those estimates as basis, and using the current fee structure,
the break even is somewhere at 300-350 paying attendees.

5 booths at EUR 200 each would probably generate around EUR 900
of net income -- the same as 5 paying attendees... it's
probably easier to another 5 visitors than to put much work
into getting companies to pay for booths :-/

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
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