To cover our costs such as venue, food, drink, video, presenter, as well as my time as organiser. As I mentioned on the event page I am setting up the event as a non-profit organisation. Any money left over from the event will ploughed back into the production of future events. It has been a tough decision to make however it will make the event sustainable for the long term. I mailed out the proposal over a week ago and received huge support in favour of the changes.
Feel free to let me know your thoughts. My email is d.grabov@gmail.com, in case you wish to contact me directly.
Given the size of the organisation (aka you), there's really no difference between no-profit and paying yourself or for-profit - other than paperwork. I assume you will pay yourself, at least a little, given you say "as well as my time".
Not saying you shouldn't charge or that you don't deserve to be compensated for your effort - I'm just not a fan of chucking around non-profit status to seem less money-grabbing when it doesn't mean anything, and given nobody will consider you money-grabbing anyway it seems pointless in this case :)
Feel free to let me know your thoughts. My email is d.grabov@gmail.com, in case you wish to contact me directly.