Why you can't Kickstart a conference
Many times conference organizer here.<p>Every year was the same, we organized an installfest plus talks about free (as in freedom) software and open source products or projects for people.<p>Every year was thinking where to do that and start talking to places to get the space.<p>Every year we declined the idea of patronage from private companies to avoid them controlling something. So, the upfront cost was paid by us (think that a team could be from 10 to 20 people)<p>That could took us maybe 4 months to organize one day, that must be THAT DAY.<p>Over the years we got experience and we learn a lot from the people doing this event before, setting a schedule to start meetings, having a base of providers, having contacts to ask for space, etc. Our budget was 0 (yes it is a zero) and all cost should be paid by us, the organizers. So to recover that we made t-shirts, and souvenirs (that needed to be paid in advance) then maybe you didn&#x27;t lost money when the event was finished. Because people didn&#x27;t pay a ticket for it, it is a free event.<p>It was a huge effort to make something like that. Months sleeping few hours, people going crazy to setup tracks for talks, approving them and talking to the people that gave the talk to accommodate the schedule. Having the t-shirts on time and the souvenirs, because if not, we will not broke, but we cannot recover the founds. Having the cables and the network ready, the software and servers to install was also a huge task.<p>Food and water..? Yes, that is a crazy nightmare<p>We even developed Eventol[1], a software to schedule this kind of events. Yes it is open source also.<p>Organizing a conference looks easy but really, if you work and you do that, get good people around you. Look what they are good for and what they enjoy doing and give them task that make them happy. It could sound almost a stupid advice, but is not, if they are not being paid and even when they are paid, if you gives a task were they are bad to or something they don&#x27;t like, it could fail and that means delays. And your conference is already scheduled and you cannot say: sorry, it will be not this weekend, will be the next one. No.<p>I was happy to be attendant first, volunteer for some years, then get the experience to be the manager of sooo experienced people and got milestones in the event history, from record of attendance, to earn money and stop losing it (that was for the next year event) or the software we used and it is open to everyone.<p>Anyway, after the conference.., you needed 8 months to relax your mind and body and start again that crazy idea to run a conference about free Software and for free.<p>As an acquired experience, when you got that running, you can start thinking to be a wedding planner if you wants to move from IT, because a conference is something like that when we talk about organization :v<p>[1] Eventol: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;eventol.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;eventol.org&#x2F;</a>