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Naresh Jain's Random Thoughts on Software Development and Adventure Sports
     
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Subsidizing the Cost of Conferences

Every single conference I’ve organized, I’ve made it free or almost free (by subsidizing the fee substantially.)

Recently we were planning a 2-day conference in Indore called XP Days, Indore 2010. During the planning, we had 2 options:

We could charge the following to cover the expenses of (Food, Delegate Kits, Certificates, Local Transportation, Speaker reimbursement, etc):

  1. Students 500 Rs, Faculty 800 Rs and Industry Delegates 1000 Rs
  2. Students 250 Rs, Faculty 350 Rs and Industry Delegates 500 Rs

We expect around 100 delegates in total. Based on last year’s break-up we expect. 50 students, 40 faculty members and 10 people from Industry.

Option 1
50 * 500 = 25,000
40 * 800 = 32,000
10 * 1000 = 10,000
Total = 67,000

OR

Option 2
50 * 250 = 12,500
40 * 350 = 14,000
10 * 500 = 05,000
Total = 31,500

I choose Option 2 and tried to fill the gap via Sponsorship.

Some people raised their concern saying, why are we so worried about subsiding the cost, when:

  • We can afford to pay Rs 175 for a movie at multiplex.
  • We can afford to pay Rs 200 for a pizza at Pizzahut.
  • We can afford to pay hunders of thousands of Rupees per year to private colleges and schools for the education.

My response was:

If we look around, a decent number of well know companies were started by drop-outs from school. Does that mean we should encourage all students to drop-out of school?

We don’t. We don’t because we think there are few people who can pull it off, rest of us (average people), need a degree to back us. When it comes to things like this, we try to take a safe approach. We try to take an approach that is more commonly accepted.

So sure there might be people who can afford movie in a multiplex, eat a 200 Rs pizza, etc. But what if there are some really interested students who can’t afford it? Is this a safe choice? What is the harm it bringing the cost down?

Also to add, when I was in college, every other week I had some marketing/sales people from <sarcasm>prestigious companies like IBM, Microsoft, etc</sarcasm> come and give free presentations about <sarcasm>their wonderful products and explain how their products are going to change the world</sarcasm>. At times these guys would try to chew our legs off, trying to sell their stuff.

From a student’s perspective how different are we? Why would they pay x amount to attend something *similar* when others are free?

As a student, I would rather spend my limited pocket money on Movie or Pizza, coz I know the outcome for sure. I would certainly have to think very hard before spending my money on something that I’m not sure of (esp. considering the limited knowledge about these things.)

I can go on. What I’m trying to highlight is that there is a lot of thinking the students/participants have to go thru before investing their time and money in something like this. We should try to simply their decision making process by reducing as many parameters as possible (going to their college/city, reducing the cost, etc).


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