[group-organizers] RSVPs

[Don Sheu]

Our point is not to charge for the monthly meetup. Our no-show has been all
over the place recently. Earlier in our org's life, RSVPs were pretty
accurate.

Peter, that's interesting about asking about menu choice. I've done
informal surveys to gauge food choice. In our case was tacos and trying to
ascertain how many people wanted a vegetarian option. We did have very
little drop-off during that event.

My biggest concern is that we'll get at least 100+ potential attendees
every month. However when we have a venue host with a smaller capacity like
we did recently and half of the RSVPs don't show, it's not fair for the
folks unable to attend because somebody RSVP'ed and didn't show.

I noticed Hy Carrel's message to SF Python recently a reminder of how they
handle drop-off. They have staggered entry time for reserved attendees and
waitlisted members.

Thank you for everybody for comments. Inclusion is a big mission for our
group. First job is making sure we include everybody who wants to make a
meeting.
ᐧ

On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 7:19 AM, Peter Farrell <pjf at maestropublishing.com>
wrote:

> We had virtually no complaints when we did our Data^3 event at Target last
> March...accept one. We had a guy that has a startup ask for a free ticket.
> We declined as his attendance rate was 1/19 events. He eventually did
> reserve a spot and.... Showed up.
>
> Anyways for limited space venues like Target Commons, we felt it was
> important to fill the space but not exceed the fire marshal room limits of
> 250. They were weary of setting the limit higher because of no shows plus
> we asked which box lunch they wanted. We had the correct number of GF, veg
> and vegan special boxes for the first time!
>
> The Target event planning crew (they have dedicated staff for the Commons)
> thought the reservation deposit was a great idea and had started to do that
> for their special events at the Skyway Software Symposium they run.
>
> We just did a special event with a speaker from Twitter that was in town
> and didn't use a reserve a spot process... We planned on 30-35% no shows
> but it was in excess of almost 60%. I was a bit embarrassed because our
> sponsor bought lots of food and the speaker from Twitter made extra effort
> to come.
>
> I feel the key is to word it correctly by not calling it a ticket but
> reserve your spot. Processing refunds is pretty easy with EventBrite (but
> could be easier). So this is a tool in our tool case but not one we use at
> our monthly meetings.
>
> On Mon, Jun 8, 2015 at 3:00 PM, Don Sheu <dinaldo at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hey folks, wondering what approaches folks have to encouraging accurate
> > RSVPs for events.
> >
> > Some of PuPPy's organizers want to charge a fee of $5 over Eventbrite.
> > Amount would be refunded on check-in.
> >
> > Welcome everybody's thoughts and experience on this one.
>
> What problem are you trying to solve by making people pay, and how
> large is the data set of inaccurate RSVPs to accurate attendance for
> the group? I've found between 60-70% attendance to be the rate with
> the handful of things I've organized, other organizers I've talked to
> were roughly in that range, and 0.65 happens to be the number Ned
> settled on in pizza.py. What have you in seen in that group?
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-- 
Don Sheu
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