as an events organizer i empathize. the venue and food costs stack up surprisingly quickly and many events are run at breakeven or loss, and attendees dont often have empathy for the stress of putting together even an average event.
if i might suggest one way to build up to a conference is to run meetups beforehand. not many are needed, say 3-6 of them before you probably have the community trust and events experience to go big.
+1 to this. I used basically this same approach to start the biggest JS meetup in my town. We eventually got ~200 people showing up regularly.
I think it’s still running even after I moved out of the country 8 years ago.
edit: Our venue trick was “Hey, if we pack your bar/restaurant on a random weekday night so you make a killing in drinks, can we have the place?”. Venues were happy to say yes.
The “tell us your quietest night and we’ll get 20+ people to come that night” trick works wonders, not just for tech meetups but for things like karaoke nights and other kinds of adult social activities too. It’s a great win-win.
Oh, I like that! Offer to boost their quietest night. Love it :) that could work on a relatively small scale. That's really good social engineering, since one thing you have control over is your own scheduling, but they have no control on what their dead night is.
And if you packed their busiest night, they might make some more money but it might cause them problems and stress them out. Offer to boost their deadest night.
Are you a social dancer? :D Salsa dancer for over a decade and event (Congress/social) organizer for a few... I know exactly what you're talking about!
PS - the issue is that many social dancers want to dance over being social, and alcohol detracts from it. People have jobs and want to pay to contribute. We ended up settling on a cover charge that comes with food credit so people can booze up if desired, and buy water/snacks if not. Win-win.
Yeah I used to run a monthly industry night. Very easy to get space on a Thursday night. They'd give us our own room that would otherwise be unstaffed on a week night. Tech nerds are very easy patrons. Not rude or unruly.
Like you said, just talk to the manager and say "hey I've got 50 people that want a place to hang out and order beer. Can we do that at your place or should we go somewhere else?". Easy win for everyone.
Running a conference is harder. Hotel conference rooms are way over priced. The AV prices are morally offensive.
If your attendance is under 100 you can probably do a restaurant. It will cost food and beverage but you likely just need to hit a $ minimum. Fees should be minimal. If you need conference space for over 100 I don't think there are any "good" options. And definitely no good options if you get into several hundred.
if i might suggest one way to build up to a conference is to run meetups beforehand. not many are needed, say 3-6 of them before you probably have the community trust and events experience to go big.
https://www.swyx.io/manifest-meetups