FOSS4G'13

The working site for the conference committee of FOSS4G 2013

Pricing for FOSS4G

Last saved by Rollo Home on February 5, 2013

I have invited you all to share a goole doc which sets out my suggestions for pricing the conference
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmwShPAd7pU4dEQwemtKVDhvOWZlNXZYVm9RZk5oeHc#gid=0

UK Early Bird Prices are
Delegate Fee Full package   £380.00
Delegate Fee per day   £125.00
Student Delegate Fee 3 days package except party   £250.00
Student Delegate Fee per day   £85.00
Workshops   £62.50
Hackathon is free
Hotel Rooms   £150.00
University Rooms  £52.00
Wed Icebreaker Reception & Dinner   £40.00 (outside of package? RWH)
Gala night (outside of package)   £60.00
Closing party   £40.00

Notes
  1. These are the discounted early bird rates, we will show some higher rates (ca 15-20%) to encourage early booking
  2. Full Delegate package includes the Gala night but not icebreaker or closing party, these will be extra
  3. Accommodation charged in addition to delegate fees
  4. Student 3 day package does not include party (rate is just about cost after allowing for VAT, credit card fee and registration cost). This is about a 35% discount, suggest bursaries are used to cover accommodation and travel.
  5. Workshop and hackathon assume that we will provide free coffee, biscuits, sandwich and fruit lunch, soft drinks and water. Need to confirm costs with venue
  6. Have to cut down on cost of icebreaker event to keep cost at £40, need to confirm with venue.
  7. Closing party assumes we can get similar deal on catering to icebreaker, maybe burgers, pizza and beer
  8. Friday night delegates are out on the town with us as hosts but not paying

Comments

Steven Feldman on February 2, 2013:

I know it is a rush but can we agree the pricing in the next few days so that we can get the registration live ASAP

Claire, can you get a dummy up on regonline please, can you use these rates for early bird and for non discounted use 
Delegate Fee Full package   £450
Delegate Fee per day   £150
Student Delegate Fee 3 days package except party   £250
Student Delegate Fee per day   £85
Workshops   £75
Hackathon is free
Hotel Rooms   £175
University Rooms  £60
Wed Icebreaker Reception & Dinner   £40
Gala night (outside of package)   £60
Closing party   £40

Mark Iliffe on February 2, 2013:

Looks good to me. I've commented in the google docs spreadsheet.

Ian Edwards on February 2, 2013:

I'm very pleased to see the low student fee...

Antony Scott on February 3, 2013:

I put a few comments/questions in the spreadsheet.

Franz-Josef Behr on February 3, 2013:

Hotel Rooms £175 - for the whole congress?

Steven Feldman on February 3, 2013:

No they are the luxury rooms in the new hotel. Price is per night. The real price is £150, we need to show a higher rate for after the early bird has expired. Although we could do that just for the conference fees

Claire Gilmour on February 4, 2013:

Do we need to know what workshops/days of workshops people want to attend or does the £62.50 cover all?

Day attendance is for the 18th/19th and 20th?

Antony Scott on February 4, 2013:

Also on pricing – are we cross-discounting (10% off FOSS4G if you attend AGI and vice versa)? Was talking to someone who thought we were.

Claire Gilmour on February 4, 2013:

yes when people book with FOSS4G they get the code 'AGIGeoCom13' to use against AGI and 'FOSS4G13' for the other way.

Steven Feldman on February 4, 2013:

@ Claire

We will need to have two items on the menu for registration
  • Workshops (Day 1) 17th Sept
  • Workshops (Day 2) 18th Sept
Re Day passes we will need Day passes for 19th, 20th and 21st

Claire Gilmour on February 4, 2013:

If someone books to attend, for example, the 19th (at £125) can they book the Hackathon on the 17th or 18th? Or can they only do this if they are booked on the conference for the correct day?

Claire Gilmour on February 4, 2013:

the registration page is now ready in testing mode: https://www.regonline.co.uk/foss4g2013 can you all have a go and let me know if you have any issues?  Can you also check the t&cs and the confirmation email you receive.

The only options people get for a 10% discount is when booking either the full conference or single days.  i.e. no discount is given when booking for the Icebreaker/Gala/Closing Party/Workshops/Accommodation.  Let me know if I should change this.

Thanks
Claire

Mark Iliffe on February 4, 2013:

My understanding is that the hackathon should be free to attend, even for non delegates. If not, how can we make that happen?

Steven Feldman on February 4, 2013:

Hackathon is completely free to attend regardless of whether you are attending the conference. It might be easier to put the hackathon registration through eventbrite, that way it is a separate reg and we would avoid any fees to reg online?

Steven Feldman on February 4, 2013:

Just tried the registration and it seems to be working fine.

A couple of minor tweaks
  • The full conference package should say "including Gala Night"
  • I think workshops are on 17th & 18th not 18th and 19th. Can Matt or one of the program team confirm
  • As above the hackathon is completely free and may best be booked via one of the free services to avoid the RegOnline charges
  • Is the hackathon 1 or 2 days?
I guess we will need a table of prices on the main FOSS4G site which shows the Full rates and the early bird rates which prompts a couple of thoughts
  • When do we shut down the Early Bird? (we can always extend nearer the time)
  • Are the prices a bit high? We can afford to lower if we are willing to accept a smaller surplus - This is one for Peter to give some advice
Shall we make this the first topic in our call on Friday?

Mark Iliffe on February 4, 2013:

I'd completely agree with the eventbrite for the hackathon Steven.

Steven Feldman on February 4, 2013:


If we eventbrite the hackathon Mark will you set it up and manage it so that Claire does not have to worry about it?

Mark Iliffe on February 4, 2013:

I'll take responsibility for it.

Best,

Rollo Home on February 5, 2013:

Some comments:
1. is the 'Google Doc' referenced above in comments actually the text document at the top of this thread? If not, can you provide the link again to the Google Doc as I seem to have missed that.
2. The day rate seems too low to me in comparison to the full package. I'm assuming that we'd rather encourage people to take the full package or at least make a larger % profit on those taking day rates as they are effectively a larger overhead to manage?
3. The booking form looks great, but it is complicated as large single (ever expanding) list. Can the booking process be split into different pages? For example conference on one, accommodation on another and 'extras' (gala etc) on a third?
4. For those of us that are easily confused, is it possible to have a hyperlink to what the packages actually include? For example if I select the full package, do I need to also book accommodation? If not, then do I get a choice of accommodation type? (I know the answer - it's just an illustration ;-)
5. There is no CVV code field (credit card transaction page) - is this a problem? (Do we want to accept AmericaExpress? I always thought that the chargers were significantlly higher than for other cards?)

Wow. I managed to rack up a £2,500+ fee for two people attending (and that doesn't include the costs associated with GeoCom, which of course we'd 'both' be attending as well). Watching those extra's will be key to delegates keeping costs down.....

Have to say, it looks very professional. Nice one Clarie.

Steven Feldman on February 5, 2013:

@ Rollo

1. Link is correct but here it is again https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmwShPAd7pU4dEQwemtKVDhvOWZlNXZYVm9RZk5oeHc#gid=0

2. Bear in mind that the full conference package includes the Gala night so represents a £55 saving on booking 3 day packages plus party. I have sort guidance from the board re pricing and they may recommend that we reduce overall by about 5% to make more affordable but less surplus.

3. Claire to comment

4. We will need a page that sets out the different options, what's included and the savings from the early bird. The link to Reg Online should come from that page so that people have read and hopefully understood before booking. Inevitably menu pricing will get a bit complicated but I can't see an alternative.

5. Can Claire or Alan confirm credit card costs so that we can take a view on Amex

I am a bit worried at the cost of the conference, workshops, full social plus accommodation, even in a uni room we are looking at close to  £900! Even a 5% reduction will be £850 but I don't see how we can do much more. Thoughts?

Jo Cook on February 5, 2013:

Steven,

With respect to your last comment about the prices- I've uploaded the request for proposals doc again, which has the reports from previous FOSS4Gs in the back, including prices- none of which include accommodation.  If you do some back of envelope sums you see it's not too bad but to be honest I'd let the board decide. There will always be complaints, whatever we decide!

Barend Köbben on February 5, 2013:

In view of Jo's observation: Why do we not fully seperate conference & accomodation fees? So people register for the conference (+WSs, Gala, ete), and on a seperate Accomodation page can either book  the conference hotel or uni rooms or get told to alternatively book themselves  Nottingham hotels, B&Bs (or camping) to do their own thing... Or was there a deal with the UNi/EMMC to to dit this way?

Jo Cook on February 5, 2013:

That sounds sensible to me- allow people to book their own accommodation if they want to (chances are, they won't)- but also it allows us to compare prices more effectively with previous events.

Steven Feldman on February 5, 2013:

We have distinguished accommodation from the delegate passes, they are priced separately and we will indicate where to ook for alternatives.

We have a commitment to take a minimum number of hotel roomos and university rooms (not that many) which I am sure will be used by people who value the convenience of being within a minutes walk of the venue.

Claire Gilmour on February 5, 2013:

Sorry for the long post - I am answering everything in one go...

I have changed the listing to full conference package including Gala Night,

I have based the workshops and hackathon dates on the image here: http://2013.foss4g.org/dates/

Happy for the hackathons to be moved to Eventbrite, however, it can be selected as a free event on regonline and it keeps it all in one place, however, Eventbrite would be free if they aren't attending anything else.

Steven - I will send you through the wording for the different packages, which will need to be fleshed out a bit.  Once prices are set I will make up a table to go online. (based on http://www.agi.org.uk/agi-geocommunity-registration/)

AGI'13 are closing early bird on the 31st July.  Whatever date you go for it is best if you stick with it - extending early bird rates can come across that we are struggling for bookings.

Unfortunately Regonline does not allow different pages for booking options or hyperlinks from the options.

I dont think the CVV code causes any problems - no one has had problems in past years.  We dont accept American Express as the handling fee is very high and the process to get the money from them is really hard work.

Credit card charges are about 3.5% (Visa and Mastercard)

Franz-Josef Behr on February 5, 2013:

With one conference I managed at our University, we made reservation for participants, and some of them did not come to the hotel or left it earlier. Well, we had some trouble and costs afterwards... Therefore I second the suggestion to separate conferenced and accomodation.

Steven Feldman on February 5, 2013:

Just to try an clarify

The conference and the accommodation are separate. If delegates want to book their own accommodation they are free to do so and that will be shown clearly on the web site before they start to register.

If they choose to book the onsite accommodation it will be added to their bill and it will all be charged to their credit card so we will have no money at risk.