- I’ve got most of the messages up through Sep 27th drafted. Still need to tweak a couple, but close to done.
- Two messages going out tomorrow, one to the registered list and one to the – wait, yes – the unregistered list, then one on Wed for a call for volunteers
- We’re at 502 after removing a couple dupes, and it may go down a few more as I remove some students that are dual registered
- ONETUG message should go out any time, had technical challenges with Mailchimp and the email background color
- I’ve queued tweets about all the sponsors and all the speaker/sessions through next Friday, plus a ‘good morning’ tweet for Saturday, a minu 15 minute and minus 5 minute reminder as each set of sessions start, and a reminder for the end of day raffle. We’ll fill in the rest with our TwitterDJ that will be at the PASS table.
- The chart now includes our data from 2007 & 2008.
- Strategy wise, I’m in favor of opening registration as early as possible, it allows those that can do so to commit to attending right then, then it’s just a drop-in to whatever messages go out
- Clearly a lot of people register at the end, so what’s the latest you can start and do ok? I suspect you could do it 4 weeks out if you have a good list and have done the event before, but that’s a lot of stress/risk. Sponsors really like seeing that you can and are delivering on registration, stretching out the curve across 12 or 16 weeks gives everyone time. The better question is when should marketing start? I used to think 8 weeks out for the most part, but looking at this year I’m thinking I like 12-14 weeks a lot better. That’s purely a swag though. I’d like to see some work done across all events and factoring in email volume. Someone want to do that analysis?
- Right now the wait list will activate at 600. We hate to turn anyone away, but at some point with rooms that hold 30-40 people we hit a real cap. The challenge is what the drop rate will be. Last year it was 20%, but that was after some people cancelled which changes the top number. I’m going with 30%, so if we hit 600 (and remember my ambitious goal was 500) that would put us at 420 on site (not counting 60 students that may or may not attend after lunch). What’s our real capacity?
- Our nine rooms have a published capacity of 306
- Worst case we sit 20% more in the back (6 people in a 30 person room), that takes us to 367
- Let’s guess that we have 25 people working at sponsor tables, registration, etc, so we’ve accounted for 392
- That leaves 28 people talking to sponsors, networking, or arriving late/leaving early
