Re: [Fsuk-manchester] Fwd: [GeekUp] BarCamp Manchester 3

[Tim Dobson]

On 08/08/10 22:54, Pater Mann wrote:
> Tim Dobson wrote:
>> I strongly recommend attending.
> 
> I would have liked to! I realise that I am too late for this event
> anyway but, unfortunately, this email was amongst a large backlog that
> I am working through now. This sounded very interesting but with only
> 100 tickets available and those being released at a time when I was at
> work, the odds were stacked against me. 

Join the waiting list!

> Apart from the obvious
> (money!) , is there any other reason why this event was so restricted?

Several actually. The reason this Barcamp Manchester 3 only released 100
tickets is because it's located at Madlab. Relatively speaking, Madlab
is quite a small venue and thus putting more than 100 people inside it
is somewhat painful.
On the other hand, Madlab, with help from FlyTheCoop, is, relatively
speaking, very cheap.

"Wait!" you cry...

Why not use a larger/different venue?

Issues with Manchester venues:
* Use a dedicated conferencing centre and they want to charge you a set
££/delegate. At this point, finding sponsorship turns from being a
mission into a quest - the costs for food/wifi/projectors rapidly get
very silly indeed.
(£12 for wifi per day per delegate = completely uneconomical)

> Whilst it is great that these events are free, I feel that it is not
> so good if that means that only a few can attend. 

Barcamps, a grassroots worldwide movement, are always free. I can think
of examples where one

> I certainly wouldn't
> object to paying a nominal amount to attend a whole day's unconference
> and, although a couple of pounds per attendee (for example) wouldn't
> even come close to covering the costs of the event, it might help
> "grease the wheels" enough to consider expanding it. Of course, more
> attendees means more money and so on...

It also adds an extra level of complexity if I remember rightly - as
organisers you know that a certain number of people are going to say
they can't come. With free events, the process is easy, you pass on
their ticket - with paid events you need to refund them.

One of the reasons, as I understand it, that Dan & Andrew are running a
small, low budget event is that they want to run them more frequently.

Barcamp Manchester 2 (~250 tickets), an event I was involved in putting
together had somewhat insane overheads which led to a last minute
scramble for sponsorship.

At the end of the day, look up the wikipedia page on Barcamps - it's a
grassroots movement and I'd strongly encourage everyone to attend as
many as they can and have a think about running one!

Cheers,

Tim