Samuel Klein, 23/03/2014 00:21:
This has a few benefits:
- tickets fully cover the cost of food and materials
- tickets contribute significantly to covering the cost of the event
- scholarships and reimbursements for attendance (for scholars,
professionals, academics all getting covered by their home institutions), in paying for tickets, cover the full cost of those people attending the event.
- more accurate headcounts in advance.
I agree on the benefits. I wish I could have paid "real" tickets/registration fees in the years when I attended Wikimania: (my time, and secondarily) travel and accommodation would have still been the main costs, but I would have avoided the feeling of being what in Italian is called a "mangia pane a ufo".
Nemo