FOSS4G 2016 Lessons Learned

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FOSS4G 2016 Lessons Learned

This is to document things that the local committee learned, for the benefit of future FOSS4Gs!!

Sponsorship

• Arnulf told me, that the 1500$ supporter package was especially created "as is", means with conference pass and is used by smaller companies - which are the ground deposit and so important for spreading the word! That's the reason, why we didn't touch it...
• We've done a very, very conservative calculation and only calculated 40k sponsoring money. Of course, the more, the better, but doing that will give you a more robust view on what attendees must bring in return. Might be you should adapt your break even points or even have to rise your fees. Finally it was around €120k minus free tickets connected to the sponsorship
• Many exhibitors asked for additional reduced and/or free tickets, which we negotiated
• We seperated exhibition and sponsorship due to some empty big booths from Gold Sponsors in Seoul... manned booth are much more attractive for all attendees and so in general for all exhibitors ;-)

 * exhibition was possible from bronze upwards (see idea behind supporter level above)
 * booth choose was "first comes, first serves, regardless from sponsorship level
 * 4 weeks before the conference we opened the exhibition also to our supporter sponsors

• Exhibition costs were "as is", no extra value for us, the organizers
• We created many kind of partnerships (I pass over the list of contacts) and announced them as "Institutional partners". The deal was, we publish their logo on our website and announce them (twitter, e.g.) and they publishour newsletters through their email-lists - no costs for nobody, but helped to spread the word

résumé: I think seperating sponsorship and exhibition is a good idea. Perhaps think to lower sponsorship level costs, so that sponsorship is even possible for "small and/or one man companies", perhaps think of a mini-supporter sponsorship without ticket. When we've seen, that there were rooms free, we offered sponsor-tracks in the programme, but the time to announce them was too short, so nearly nobody attended there. My opinion: Cancel.

OSGeo

• Our goal was to put OSGeo much to front, so that everybody gets the message: "THIS IS AN OSGEO CONFERENCE"
• For this the first and best located booth we planned was for OSgeo and from what I have seen, there was always traffic
• Maybe a point for the 2018+ calls to request for an OSGeo booth in the first row

Travel Grants

• The Travel Grants Program should be a fix part on every FOSS4G. Apply for money from the board soon! Conference Committee has to define unique rules (I already requested for this)
• Should be sponsored by OSgeo and potentially the attendees. We used a Paypal account, but only gathered 50€, perhaps need for better marketing here
• We paid travel grantees the ticket & their overnight - paying for travels is very difficult and could hardly be managed (what if they cancel their trip a few days before? The money is lost etc.). So Travel-Grantees had to care for their travel costs on their own
• Selection mode & more -> see FOSS4G 2016 Travel Grants

Financial Stuff

• Make kind of a risk analysis, that lists the costs you have 6,3,2,1 month before the event - this shows clearly, which costs you have in the very unlikely case, you have to cancel. Comparing these costs with the number of already registered attendees will help you to sleep better ;-)
• About Early Birdies - I just talked to Sanghee, chair of the 2015 event. In Seoul 25% of all attendees registered few days before online registration closed or did it on-site! And that's why we thought about how we can attract Early Birders with more than just a smaller price. I like the early plans from Boston attracting Early Birdies especially!

LOC Organization

• If LOC consists of volunteers, don't expect permanent awareness, be patient and plan with some slack time ;-)
• But if LOC consists of enthusiastic people, it gives F4G a personal touch, better than buy everything from a PCO

Discounts

• Keep in mind, that offering special rates for students (and other groups) might cause problems for your general calculation! (see student helpers)
• We only gave some discount to sponsors, that sent many people (special deals)

Student Helpers

• We opened the doors for approx. 40 students from all over the world. The deal was 50% work for us, 50% free attendance. We also opened the not sold out workshops for them two days before. They worked at registration/for the video team mainly. Entrance pass was a copy of the student card
• Students were partly mixed with travel grantees. For these we paid some money for their travels
• In general good idea, needs some orchestration and don't expect every student to show up at the event!
• Try to implement them the idea of an intensive communication - some of them didn't even reply to direct emails
• The majority did and they did a great job & were happy to have this possibility!!!

Workshops

• We installed the OSGeo Live on the hardware, which was a good point, better than boot live (and even better than bring-your-own, which causes a lot of extra work for the workshop leaders)
• don't expect workshop leaders to read all the information you send them. We pointed them to a weak WIFI and asked them to sent us all data/software before, but some didn't which caused some network problems, but nothing serious
• plan early but also expect workshop leaders to cancel their workshops short before. So have some extra-workshops in the hind quarters
• some of the workshop leaders requested tests in the venue before. If possible, make it possible ;-)
• We had the strategy: "no conference-pass, no workshops" - we opened the workshops for some people that requested the weekend before the workshops actually happened. This mnakes booking the conference more attractive

Academic Track

• need for a Student Award troubleshooter
• we integrated AT into the regular programme instead of having one parallel track. Connects more people in our eyes.

Code Sprint

• I think the idea to have two extra long code sprints before and after was a good one. Of course not everywhere the possibilty we had with BaseCamp are so perfect, but I guess, if people travel, they don't mind staying longer if they have the opportunity to work with their project for longer

Other side events

• We offered some side events from the official tourismus office Bonn, but had to cancel them with no bookings early. Otherwise we'd had to guarantee that we pay for the minimum attendees number and the risk was too big. Problem: We are a community of late bookers!

Food

• Interestingly is food where we spent most of the money. Venue, Codesprint, Workshops, B2B, Gala Event.....
• We did not request for special diets. In the end, there was 1 vegan guy out of 888 - compared to all the organisation-work to do, if offering several diets/menues, that was okay for us
• I guess the idea to have drinks all day was perfect (ok, Bonn was hot these days), but people like to drink when they want and not when the caterer offers. It's worth some extra money!