Paris did have security and they also were the ones handling checking for badges in the entrance.
Darmstadt it was mainly easily handled by volunteers. This was also due to the fact that the venue only had one set of doors to enter from. (unlike Paris)
The most critical hire for whatever we choose is to make sure that we have clean bathrooms.
@julienMalka: In paris we needed security by law because we organized it in a public building
@hexchen: Is it a closed area or semi-public? Can we even practically do badge-checking?
this is also about potential restrictions for whether we can set up stuff in the hallway
@das-g: the venue is part of the campus, the main room is the auditorium
checking tickets at the entrance would likely not work, at least on workdays, because students will have to pass
@Janik: checking tickets is not the biggest problem; we could have a registration desk
@das-g: this is the usual approach. there are sometimes paid conferences, and then people get their badge at the desk
@hexchen: we plan to bring in sponsors, and an option to voluntarily mark up the ticket as a donation
can also offer commercial tickets, and would need the invoicing setup for that
merch may be for sale
@ners: at ZuriHac we also experimented with a POS terminal where one can donate directly
@julienmalka: having a rough idea of the budget is necessary in order to adjust factors: sponsorship, ticket prices, options for food/drinks. It’s not easy to draft a budget with a 20k unknown
@ron: agreed, a rough outline would be a precondition. regardless, we don’t have many other options.
@ners: historically, the cost to run ZuriHac (without venue) is 15k CHF. With 35k CHF we can do it reasonably
@hexchen: in case money is left over we can donate it to the foundation to use it for the next NixCon
@fricklerhandwerk: there are still 18k EUR left over from NixCon 2024, so we can use that as a security
It’s very important not to lose the community spirit of the conference.
This means we should not sell sponsors things like logo space on official NixCon merch.
Set a profit target based on total budget and use said profit for next NixCon
Everything above said profit target should be split between other foundation projects and NixCon
@Janik: 2023 ticket prices included merch, breakfast and lunch, and attendance
TCA ~300 EUR
@fricklerhandwerk: would like to have free regular tickets to cap TCA
@ners: in 2023 a quarter of attendees had a “professional” ticket
@raitobezarius: regular tickets were 70 EUR, professional 140 EUR
@john-rodewald: getting 100 professional tickets would cover all meals
@fricklerhandwerk: what about merch sales? is it even worth it in terms of additional effort?
@ners: would have to figure out what we’d even want to sell
@raitobezarius: contributors usually don’t want to go to expensive places, and some said they’re not interested in NixCon Zurich for that reason
we already talked about speaker stipend, but should go further and consider support for attendees
if we put money in an attendee assistance fund, how many people will come?
could be staged: ticket, lodging, travel
also have to think not only about number of people who come, but also who will come
it may be easy to get a lot of beginners, but too few advanced contributors
do we want a beginner conference, a contributor conference, a commercial conference?
how to foster a healthy mix?
@ners: with free base tickets, we’re moving in the direction of a beginner focus; contributors second, commercial third
personally, and from the project lead team perspective, we’d rather want a contributor conference
@fricklerhandwerk: definitely need a healthy mix. could systematically encourage contributors (which may mean different things when meeting in person) with stipends, e.g. for running hallway track activities
@raitobezarius: also, just having experts around for interesting discussion often makes a difference
@ners: if we get requests for stipends, we’ll have to prioritise based on some metric
@raitobezarius: we may want to make private sales to contributors first
in the past, we sold out early because of sponsor tickets
@ners: yes, early bird sales could be first announced internally
@JulienMalka: the later we open up sales, the higher the TCA
@raitobezarius: sponsors can always buy last-minute. beginners usually can’t make quick moves
agreement: contributors are the most critical target audience
@raitobezarius: also have to consider whether to put the hack day on Monday. people having to get back to work may interfere with “hackday productivity”
@ners: will ask if we can move by a day, but may result in moving the date by a week
I couldn’t make the meeting and no one took notes, so I quote from the org team’s Matrix room.
@julienmalka: The meeting was very short, but we announced that the PL team has decided not to go forward with the Zurich proposal for NixCon 2024. Even though the venue looks really good, the estimated TCA/cost of organization, associated with the absence of a formal contract, is putting the conference at too much risk. We will follow through soon to discuss with the Zurich team the potential path forward for this proposal to make it suitable for a future occurrence of NixCon.
@raitobezarius: The PL team met today and we discussed a quote we received from a professional conference center in Brussels for 20K EUR VAT excl., with no realistic catering for now.
I’m attaching the venue presentation, we would have all the areas for the 2 days, and only one area for the last day for the hacking day. EN - Area 42 Location salle évènement d'entreprise à Bruxelles
All member of the PL team have expressed their difficulties working on NixCon organization given the uncertainty around the NixOS community governance and the amount of energy their participation to the governance discussion is taking.
Decision to put the team’s proceedings on hold until the governance situation has stabilized and target a date later in the year for the conference.
Hello, we are currently planning to do a NixCon in Berlin, beginning of November. Planning is still very rough and we don’t have a location or any meeting plans yet. We will try to do those things ASAP and come back with more information
We are currently talking to one possible location and also are in loose contact with a local university, but they were quite busy this week. We want to finalize our location plans soon, we gave ourselfs a deadline of 3 weeks from now. Expect more updates then.
standard Ticket prices will probably be between 100-150€, with an option to also pay less or more.
We aim for roughly 350 people attending. and it will probably be end of october (25. 26.) but the dates are not definite yet.
we have a matrix room: https://matrix.to/#/#nixcon2024:lassul.us, we were 7 people at the last in person meetup (in the channel we have more people).
because we live in Berlin and it’s decently reachable and we can checkout locations in person
