This is the second in an occasional blog series called "The Making of a Con." You can read the first post about roles and responsibilities here.
In this blog post, we thought we would share some interesting facts and information about the costs associated with putting on a DrupalCon. It may look like magic, but really, putting on a successful DrupalCon is a huge endeavor. When we break it all up into its pieces, it looks something like this:
- Catering costs account for 42% of conference expenses! Believe it or not this is typical for conferences that serve at least one meal a day to all attendees.
- It takes a significant team of people and organizations to make everything run smoothly. Production costs including conference contractors pre-conference and onsite work, DA staff, temp staff, travel and hotels is next at 21% of conference costs.
- 10% of overall costs go toward materials including t-shirts, tote bags, pins, etc...all the fun stuff that attendees get to take home.
- Internet availability is a must to make a Con a success. 10% of the costs go here.
- And speaking of technology, the Audio Visual component to DrupalCon is complex. With all of the tech in each room including live streaming and archiving, about 9% of the budget is spent to ensure the event is well connected.
- Last, but certainly not least, is the rental of the venue and all the electricity that goes with it. This accounts for 8%.
And if my math is correct, we are at 100%! Whew - I’m tired already.
How do we pay for all of these costs? Conference pass sales cover a large portion of the costs, but their price point is relatively low compared with many other large-scale tech events. That’s because we embrace openness and remove as many barriers as possible for people to attend and participate in our community gathering. The Monday training program fees also help to cover costs. These classes are also well-priced thanks to our amazing training partners. Lastly, sponsorships are another important funding source that cover a significant amount of costs.
We make sure to put every dollar, euro and koruna to work so we deliver a quality event and end up with a profit, which allows the Drupal Association to fund more community initiatives. Specifically, DrupalCon profits fund hosting, maintenance, governance and software improvements for Drupal.org, and community programs like Global Training Days, camp support, community grants, DrupalCon scholarships, Drupal business support, and the marketing of Drupal.
So now you know a little more about what it takes to put on a DrupalCon. We hope to see you in Prague, so you can see the process in action (oh, and further your Drupal expertise!). In our next “Making of a Con” blog post, we’ll discuss how sites are selected.
Image: Flickr Creative Commons blprnt
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Comments
Parties
Can you split out the official party costs from the general budget? I think it's difficult to create a fun event for such a large number of people, and would rather see that cash go towards lower ticket prices or drupal.org hosting. I remember the Field Museum party being rather extravagent, how have the last few years compared to that?
Nowadays there are generally multiple parties every night scheduled against each other, I don't think we need the official one anymore.
No more official parties
I don't think we do official parties anymore for precisely that reason. Parties at recent drupalcons have been hosted by companies that wanted to do it themselves.
Official parties at past
Official parties at past DrupalCons (i.e., Chicago, London, and Denver) have been separately ticketed events with their own sponsors, and their costs have not been a factor in ticket prices for the main DrupalCon conference.
Part of the motivation for having an official party was precisely to avoid the issue where sponsors were spending a lot of money on parties that were scheduled opposite each other; the idea was that by pooling the money that those sponsors would have spent on their own parties, we could instead throw one larger party that everyone could attend, and where sponsors would be able to get the exposure they were looking for without having to go to the effort of organizing a party themselves or have to compete with others.
This makes sense in some cases, but not in others. For example, in Munich, it made a lot more sense just to encourage people to show up at one of the city's larger beer gardens (which had more than enough capacity to handle the extra DrupalCon attendees) than it did to hold an official party.
Thanks!
For the replies, I didn't know that. Excellent solution!
Skip lunch sometimes
Thats a terribly large number for food expense. In DC and San Francisco, the Con charged for an optional lunch. Many folks opted out went into the surrounding area for lunch and I think that worked out fine. The Association should consider this model again IMO. Not all venues are suited to this, lets do it when they are.
Skipping lunch
Hi Moshe! That's a great consideration. You are right that it's going to vary by venue. In Portland, for example, there wasn't enough food that was close enough for us to do that. And, some venues require food purchase. One other wrinkle is that tracking separate ticketing for meals does make registration and check in more challenging on the scale of thousands of people. But it's a good thought for us to reconsider at other venues.