Hello Jakub, It looks like you already had many very useful replies from visitors. In the very unlikely situation that this information does not suffice I'll give you some totally useless information (end of irony) Jakub, I could give you financial numbers, but considering the huge difference between Africa and Europe it will be totally irrelevant. the biggest challange you will face is creating a team from motivated people you can trust upon. Form a team of 5 people who really want to invest time and energy into organizing your conference. Make it clear that it's not a thing for only one year, involvement for at least two or three years is necessary. Ok, now you have a team. The next question is to make an estimation on how much visitors you think will come to your conference. This number is rather difficult to guess, but it will vary depending on the involvement of people around your community and the ease they have to travel to your conference. Don't think a first conference will reach a number of 500 visitors. That's probably being to optimistic. Now based on the number of visitors, try to search for a location where you can organize the conference. Don't forget that you also need places where people can walk around, look at stands, ... or simply sit and eat. A first conference will probably have only one simultaneous lecture, maybe with another room with workshops? Look for more than one location. Now, depending of the dates of other conferences, and the availability of your location choose a date. You now have a date and a location. You also have an idea of the price/budget for the location. Depending on the number of lectures, and the policy you have to reimburse costs of speakers (hotel, transport/airplane/...) you should also be able to make the budget for speakers. What kind of speakers do you want to invite? Local people cost less in travel costs. Use online-airplane-booking-calculations to know how much it would cost to come from the US or from Europe. Contact hotels near your conference location and check the prices. You might (in a later phase) negotiate prices with them. Always do amount * 1,3 = budget_amount to be certain you have enough budget estimated. Now the logistics budget. Depending on the available infrastructure you might want to rent more tables/chairs. Check with one or two companies to have an idea of the cost. For t-shirts: expect that 30-40% of your visitors will buy tshirts. Contact one or two t-shirt companies in your region to have prices. A way to limit the loss would be to use a design without year printed on it. It's less unique, however if you really have leftovers you can still sell them the second edition of your conference. Then there are various costs, paper, pens, bags, printing costs,... very difficult to estimate a budget. But just take a rough number linked to how much these things cost where you live. That's about budgeting the spent money. Always budget MORE for expenses. Now budgeting income. To budget income always budget LESS than you expect. Do visitors need to pay entrance? Use your visitor estimation * cost-for-a-ticket. With the expenses budget and the income-tickets-budget you know how much money you need from sponsors. Sponsors are clever. Make sure to do the math when they propose something to you in compensation for their money. Sometimes you start spending more for them than the money they bring in. (not from a FOSDEM experience) Also favor long term relations with sponsors. It's better to get less money from a sponsor, but to have him two years in a row. Than to have more money only once. From my FOSDEM and BruCON experience sponsors tend to contact the organization back when they were pleased. That's a lot less work and thus a win-win for you and the sponsor. I think that's enough to help you start, I hope this helps All the best with your conference. Christophe (FOSDEM staff for 7 or 8 years, and now BruCON staff) 2011/4/23 Jakub Szypulka <cubibubi@googlemail.com>:
Please be more precise, people as in what?
Le 23 avr. 2011 14:14, "Geert Stappers" <stappers@stappers.nl> a écrit :
On Sat, Apr 23, 2011 at 02:01:19PM +0200, Jakub Szypulka wrote:
Le 23 avr. 2011 13:33, "Richard Ha...
Thanks! As a participant in FOSDEM, I am aware of the basics of the conference. I am interested ...
FOSDEM started with people.
I suggest that FEDACON also starts with people.
Groeten Geert Stappers --
And is there a policy on top-posting vs. bottom-posting? Yes.
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