Background for those who are playing along at home: Arisia had a bad year financially in 2003, and about broke even (after all our continuing expenses) in 2004. This put us in a position where we would not be able to weather another bad year, and preliminary reports are that 2005 made a modest amount of money, but not so much that 2006 can take big risks.
Meanwhile, the convention has been wobbling between 2000 and 2400 members for some years now, pushed to and fro by weather and marketing efforts but not really departing from its fundamental size. Our volunteer base has grown to the point where running a convention of that size is comfortable, and our facilities (now that we have come up with ways to use them well) do not seem crowded. But maintaining that volunteer base requires bringing in new people, particularly students and full-weekend members rather than day members.
Arisia's membership has for some time broken down into four roughly equal categories: full rate paid at-door or late-prereg full weekend members; day members; prereg members before the final deadline; and comps. The number of comps scales less than linearly with the membership of the convention, and the number of day members scales more than linearly. We don't have an real measurement of ghosts, but those also probably scale more than linearly with the size of the con.
My feeling on the rate changes (notice that we're leaving the day rates the same) is that it will probably get us 100 more students, 100 more preregistrants, 200 more full at-doors, and 100 fewer day members. If this is true, the net financial effect on the convention is plus $2,500, which about balances the incremental cost of having 300 more people at the convention. But more importantly we'll get more of the kind of people who are likely to volunteer for the con in future years.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2005-02-03 11:41 am (UTC)Meanwhile, the convention has been wobbling between 2000 and 2400 members for some years now, pushed to and fro by weather and marketing efforts but not really departing from its fundamental size. Our volunteer base has grown to the point where running a convention of that size is comfortable, and our facilities (now that we have come up with ways to use them well) do not seem crowded. But maintaining that volunteer base requires bringing in new people, particularly students and full-weekend members rather than day members.
Arisia's membership has for some time broken down into four roughly equal categories: full rate paid at-door or late-prereg full weekend members; day members; prereg members before the final deadline; and comps. The number of comps scales less than linearly with the membership of the convention, and the number of day members scales more than linearly. We don't have an real measurement of ghosts, but those also probably scale more than linearly with the size of the con.
My feeling on the rate changes (notice that we're leaving the day rates the same) is that it will probably get us 100 more students, 100 more preregistrants, 200 more full at-doors, and 100 fewer day members. If this is true, the net financial effect on the convention is plus $2,500, which about balances the incremental cost of having 300 more people at the convention. But more importantly we'll get more of the kind of people who are likely to volunteer for the con in future years.