[EuroPython] Extra "Personal" ticket charge to Early Bird conditions on Monday

[Jacob Hallén]

lördagen den 8 februari 2014 12.32.41 skrev  Hynek Schlawack:
> 
> Let's all be nicer to each other, hm?  We're on the same team.

Hynek got it absolutely right. EuroPython is a community conference. It is run 
by volunteers for the community. When they make mistakes, we need to help them 
on the right track by offering constructive critcism.

The mistake with the Early Bird tickets was that there was a limited number of 
tickets in each category, rather than a limited number of Early Bird Tickets 
for the entire pool. I'm sure the organizers will fix this. It doesn't make 
sense that you can still be a Corporate Early Bird, but not a Personal Early 
Bird.

Budgeting the conference is really hard. The larger it becomes, the harder the 
job. Having a tight budget also makes thngs much more difficult, and Berlin has 
a tight budget. If the conference gets fully booked, there will be a profit of 
about 5% of the budget. If it reaches the number of people that came to 
Florence, there is no profit at all. The profit, by the way, is split between 
the EPS and the local Python organozation and goes back to the community in 
the form of seed capital for future conferences.

When you sell Early Bird tickets, you usually price them so they cover the 
incremental costs for an attendee. These people contribute nothing, or very 
little, to the fixed costs and if every attendee had an early Bird ticket, the 
conference would run at a huge loss.

The reason you sell Early Bird tickets are several. You get money so you can 
pay for intitial costs, like down payments on the venue. You allow some people 
who otherwise could not afford to go attend. You get some buzz in the 
community, which increases the interest for the conference.

When I ran the conference in Göteborg, we had fixed costs of about €1000. 
EVerything else was per-attendee. We also knew that we would have plenty of 
space to spare. This allowed us the luxury of having an open Early Bird 
registration. We knew (well, were almost certain) that there would be at least 
50 people who would pay the full ticket price.

In Berlin, the cost of the venue is in the tens of thousands of Euro, and 
there is a high fixed cost for Audio and Video equipment. There is also a hard 
cap on how many people you cań fit, and it is quite likely that tis cap will be 
hit. With an open Early Bird period, there is a significant risk that the 
conference will be a huge success, being fully booked, but that it would kill 
EuroPython, due to incurring a significant loss.

So, in summary, everything isn't exactly as we want it to be, but much of this 
comes from external constraints and the fact that we have a new venue and a 
new team running the conference. They are bound to make the occasional screwup 
due to inexperience. They need your understanding and support.

Jacob Hallén