Summits, Conferences and Meetups workgroup - 2023-11-02

Anyone remember how much we paid last time?

Room history says 75 Euro per person per day. But I don't know how many people we actually ended up paying for

daniel, 75 EUR * 15 people * 2 days + tax = 2250 EUR total

We told them there would be 15-20 people, they sent us an invoice for 15 people and that's what we paid afaik

Mhh I think I might have made a mistake then asking the Thon for a quote for 30 people

Looking at the previous summit wiki page there were 18 people registered

I think the last Cisco-located summit was closer to 40

So it's a bit hard to predict in advance

I think 30 is probably the max we're going to get, even with emus trying his best :)

(I don't think number of attendees is a measure of a successful summit fwiw)

I didn't mean how many people we actually end up being but how many I should tell the hotel about

Did they respond yet? Just ask for a quote for fewer people?

https://share.gultsch.de/daniel/a5ihKGrfkLiMWLHx/uUKRdA-JTaa3_lvPphrvmg.pdf

Essentially the same leaflet as last year (different hotel though)

So 118-225 per person per day

They didn't seem to be willing to give us a discount for the bedrooms. I asked twice

Yeah, that may have changed - I noticed they (and some of the other hotels) introduced a loyalty programme instead which gets you a similar discount

So somewhat more expensive than last year, even if we have the same number of attendees (and I suspect we'll have more)

25 people is probably not an unreasonable number to do our calculations with. We had 18 in the wiki but we were 20+ at times

Does SCAM feel officially responsoble to organise the summit 26?

If not the name needs changed

moparisthebest: Nope, but we should call for support or board needs to do something about it I think

OK. I've send the Ibis another message to confirm the rates are the same as last year. But let's assume for a moment they are. We have 75 euro for the Ibis and 125 for the for the Thon

so we can either have a conference at a hotel where nobody wants to stay so everyone will walk there (which is fine) or have the conference in a slightly better hotel for more money

for completness sake i've also reached out to the aloft but honestly i'd be surprised if they have fundamentally different rates then the Thon EU. it's a similar hotel class in the same area

the hotel were I usually stay at doesn’t have meeting rooms

the alternative is to find something that is just a room. I mean after all it's the catering that makes it really expensive (not that rooms are cheap)

but after suggesting this last year (not in preparation but when talking to people during the summit days) I really got the vibe that people want food so they don’t need to head out on their own during lunch time

> daniel: > 2023-11-02 06:41 (GMT+01:00) > so we can either have a conference at a hotel where nobody wants to stay so everyone will walk there (which is fine) or have the conference in a slightly better hotel for more money I'd love we could have funding so we dont need to discuss this so hard maybe even can donate participants who cannot affort the stay

> daniel: > 2023-11-02 06:43 (GMT+01:00) > for completness sake i've also reached out to the aloft but honestly i'd be surprised if they have fundamentally different rates then the Thon EU. it's a similar hotel class in the same area thanks

But we don't have funding

no, at least not yet

> daniel: > 2023-11-02 06:47 (GMT+01:00) > but after suggesting this last year (not in preparation but when talking to people during the summit days) I really got the vibe that people want food so they don’t need to head out on their own during lunch time I also think its good to keep the good vibe

daniel: Let me know if I can support you in anyway

At this point I don't know what I'm optimizing for tbh. If somebody told me to organize the best summit I can for a certain budget I can try to do that.

daniel: Would love to tell that. Do you want me to search for more places?

But I don't know anyone in Brussels who can give me a room for free

I also don't know anyone who would be sponsoring us

emus: maybe try find somewhere who will just rent us a conference room? Coworking space something like that

Just so we have a base line

I'm seeing offers for about 1100 euro / day for just the room

This btw is approximately what the Thon (the other one) wanted to charge us last year for just the room

okay will do

I'm seeing another one that's roughly 850 excluding vat

daniel: do you always tell who we are when asking for a quote?

I don’t make that a secret

okay alright

https://silversquare.eu/en/room/doorzon-21?meetingtype=meeting&date=2024-02-01&hourFrom=8%3A30&hourTo=16%3A30&capacity=20 (the same coworking operator has a few locations and a few rooms)

daniel: shall I ask with or without lunch etc?

🤷‍♂️

kept it limited

emus: who did you reach out to?

We could switch to a model where we basically charge and entry fee that covers room and catering. And then maybe waive the fee for a few individuals who we really want to have there and who wouldn't be able to come

BluePoint only sofar

couldnt check how central they are, but then we can compare anyways

> daniel: > 2023-11-02 07:59 (GMT+01:00) > We could switch to a model where we basically charge and entry fee that covers room and catering. And then maybe waive the fee for a few individuals who we really want to have there and who wouldn't be able to come I prefer to fight we keep participation open