I've been surprised at the low prices at Wikimania in Hongkong.
When I attend scientific conferences, the conference fee is typically a few hundred Euro (or Dollar), usually enough to cover the full cost of the conference. That said, these conferences are often organised ad-hoc, or within a very small scientific organisation without much external funding. Moreover, the fees are not really paid by the attendees, but rather by universities or research grants.
I found the low price for Wikimania a very positive thing.
On the other hand, I would prefer to have a tighter, more focussed, and better structured program. Breaks should be breaks, sessions should be strictly time-boxed, session chairs should be in control of timing, and maybe the rate of acceptance of talks should be stricter. While I like the bazaar-like atmosphere, it made it very hard to get to talks in time, and very frustrating for speakers who had to deal with large audience fluctuations much of the time.
Bye,
Stephan
On 23 Mar 2014, at 09:44, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, Mar 23, 2014 at 4:04 AM, Michael Snow wikipedia@frontier.com wrote:
On 3/23/2014 12:47 AM, Samuel Klein wrote:
listing higher ticket prices is a major deterrent to attending.
Worth exploring with data: what inspires or deters attendance. That may be affected by all of: the various prices listed, the difference between the high and low prices listed, presentation of other options, banner text used, &c.
Okay, but we should look for existing knowledge and research related to the subject to begin with. Answers for Wikimania ticket pricing are not as straightforward to determine by A/B testing as fundraising approaches. The population involved is a much smaller sample, motivating factors may be more diverse, and the impact on the test subjects perhaps a little too personal for that to be appropriate.
Very true. Worth exploring with research, and gathering passive data on current behavior, for a start.
(We do currently show the Wikimania banners to 100M+ readers, I believe, so we have a large sample at that level.)
SJ
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