In addition to making available scholarships clearer, I wonder whether there’s anything that can be done to convince prospective attendees of how incredibly expensive it is to run this kind of event (thus necessitating “high” ticket prices). My sense is that people just do not understand how expensive it is to get acceptable venues and acceptable catered food.
I’m not sure many people were put off by, “This looks really expensive, I’m sure the conference team are wasting my money somehow”, but perhaps more simply by, “This looks expensive, and I don’t think the ROI is going to make it worth it for me”.
My sense is that people just do not understand how expensive it is to get acceptable venues and acceptable catered food.
… in the Bay Area.
Maybe some people are just confused about what it takes to run an event, but I thought complaints meant something more like “an equivalent venue would cost a fraction as much back home”.
Edit: some back of the napkin calculations make it seem like the price difference is around 5X. Let me know if I’m missing something!
You’d think just pointing out that the goal is to break even would work, but it seems people don’t find that fully persuasive! Maybe they assume the tickets look expensive because you’re a spendthrift.
Why is it important to convince people that conferences are expensive? The real question for prospective attendees is not, are the organizers charging a reasonable price? but, is this worth the cost for me?
In addition to making available scholarships clearer, I wonder whether there’s anything that can be done to convince prospective attendees of how incredibly expensive it is to run this kind of event (thus necessitating “high” ticket prices). My sense is that people just do not understand how expensive it is to get acceptable venues and acceptable catered food.
I’m not sure many people were put off by, “This looks really expensive, I’m sure the conference team are wasting my money somehow”, but perhaps more simply by, “This looks expensive, and I don’t think the ROI is going to make it worth it for me”.
… in the Bay Area.
Maybe some people are just confused about what it takes to run an event, but I thought complaints meant something more like “an equivalent venue would cost a fraction as much back home”.
Edit: some back of the napkin calculations make it seem like the price difference is around 5X. Let me know if I’m missing something!
You’d think just pointing out that the goal is to break even would work, but it seems people don’t find that fully persuasive! Maybe they assume the tickets look expensive because you’re a spendthrift.
Why is it important to convince people that conferences are expensive? The real question for prospective attendees is not, are the organizers charging a reasonable price? but, is this worth the cost for me?
That would be true, except:
we may care about “fairness” of price-setting, or other non-economic motivations,
we may expect to be able to affect the price by objecting to it,
we may use reasonable pricing as a proxy for other forms of reasonableness.