Re: Euro PG conference?

On Sat, 13 Oct 2007 08:43:32 -0700
"Selena Deckelmann" <selenamarie(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:

> [oops! forgot to cc the list]
>
> On 10/13/07, Gabriele Bartolini <gabriele(dot)bartolini(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> > Hi Selena,
> >
> > a forgot to mention a key aspect for the 2007 organisation of
> > PGDay in Italy. It was free. Nobody paid anything for registration.
>
> Sure! And I am doing all the work for my conference for free -- no one
> has paid me anything other than compliments. Which I appreciate!!
>

> the money has been given to Software in the Public Interest, the
> umbrella non-profit that the PostgreSQL community in the US has been
> sending money to.

Yes, our corporate sponsors obviously helped, but so did our
registrants which are making up 30% of our donations.

In my opinion, conferences should not be free. We are trying to build a
community and building a community takes "some" money. When you have
someone come to a conference and five a 1 hour talk. There is value
there. That value is worth money. That money should go to the coffers
of a non profit to help do things like:

A. Have another conference
A.1 (Hire someone to help because everybody is busy)
A.2 (Pay for food for a party)
A.3 (Help sponsor travel for some speakers)
B. Purchase advocacy materials
B.1 (shirts)
B.1 (Advocacy folders)
C. Sponsors tertiary projects
C.1 (Patch review)
C.2 (Code cleanup)

If you don't raise money to do these things, it will always be a
constant circular battle.

In North America we have had 3 non-profit based conferences in recent
time. The Anniversary, PGDay OSCON, Fall 2007. The Anniversary was very
expensive but as it did cost money, it helped launch the North American
financial resources which has allowed us to do many things that we
would not have been able to do previously. Including allow PGDay IT
borrow some money to have their conference in 2007.

If it wasn't for us requiring those types of registrations we (the
North American community) would not have been able to do that for PGDay
IT.

Fall 2007 is doing the same thing. Although the money being earned
isn't at the level of the Anniversary is is already more than 3x what
we received in donations from OSCON.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

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