YAPC::EU::2009 Newsletter #3 - Pricing, Registration, etc.

Let's get down to it:

Registration opens on February 1st.
Here are the three different rates for YAPC::EU::2009

• full-time students - 40€;
• regular rate - 75€ before May 31st; 100€ after May 31st;
• corporate rate - 2000€ (if your mouth is open, you're one of those who are going to pay the 75-100€ rate).

The regular rate is of 75€/100€, depending on when you register. For everything we're putting together, we feel this it's a great value. YAPC has always been about making an inexpensive great technical event targeted at developers who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford it, and thus, 75€/100€ seems a very reasonable price, and it's in conformity with the previous editions.

The full-time student rate is a way of making the conference more affordable for those who don't have any income. The difference between 40€ and 75€ might make the difference into getting those to attend. Lower than that, and we feel that we'd be opening the conference to people who are not even interested in Perl. This is a rate for people who have no source of income; it's not meant for people who already have income but still haven't finished their studies. It's not meant as a way for people to save money, but rather as a way of making it possible for students to attend. (Documentation proving the full-time student status may be required at the conference.)

The corporate rate has now been created mostly to help people in large corporate companies attend. Believe it or not, in a lot of places it's easier to get approval to attend a 2000€ conference than a 100€ one, as the first one is looked at as something valuable, while the second one is frowned upon with disbelief and suspicion. Also, many people in such companies have complained that they'd like to sponsor YAPC, and so would their bosses, but the bureaucracies to accomplish that were just too complex. This solves two problems at once.

Now, it wouldn't be fair to have someone's employer pay 2000€ for something somebody else gets for 90€ and not get anything else in return.
OTOH, it wouldn't be fair either to give those corporate attendees something that should be available to everyone.
Thus, we came up with a corporate package that includes a free entrance to one of the training sessions we'll be having in the two days after YAPC (which regular attendees will still be able to get at a reasonable price), entrance to the speakers' dinner (which we couldn't make available to anyone, or otherwise it wouldn't be a speakers' dinner anymore; do note that we'll still be having the regular dinner for all the attendees), and a couple of more things.

So to sum it up:

• the rate is 75€ if you register before May 31st, and 100€ if you register after that date;
• if you're a student with no source of income, you can attend for 40€;
• if you have the need or the chance to, you can attend for 2000€ and get some extra perks while you're here.

As in previous years, speakers (lightning-talk speakers not included) will not have to pay, so registration will open after the talks have been approved, which takes to the next point.
Again, registration opens on February 1st.

The Call for Presentations opens on February 1st.
This year, instead of copy-pasting a previous Call for Presentations, we're setting up a few new rules and guidelines, which we'd appreciate if you took the time to read:

• We're accepting 20min and 40min talk submissions. If you have a need for a different time slot, however, you can always state your case on the comments field and we'll be happy to see what we can do;
• When submitting a talk, you're asked to select the target audience that fits your talk; this is to both help us setting up the schedule and to ease up the task the attendees always have of selecting which talks to attend;
• When submitting a talk, please type in the appropriate keywords, so that in the future the attendees can find your talk easily (eg: perl, perl6, oop, tdd, xml, smtp, mail, tt, mason, etc.)
• Please take some time to properly write your abstract; the abstract is not only the way you're trying to convince us to accept your talk, but it's also the way you're calling attendees to see your talk; it's the text that will be available on the website and at the conference;
• If you have any special requirement for your talk (eg: sound system plugged into your laptop), please write it down in the "comments" field;

That being said:

• Submit your talk at http://yapceurope2009.org/ye2009/newtalk
• Deadline for talk submission is April 31st, 2009

Don't leave it to the last minute, do it now. You can always go back to it later on and change or polish the text a bit more.

Two important notes:

• If you want to submit a talk but don't know yet whether you'll be able to attend the conference, please, by all means, submit the talk and write on the comments field that information on your inability to commit right now; we'll have another deadline for talk confirmation;
• If you're an experienced Perl programmer and would like to give a talk but don't know on what, or if you're feeling like helping beginner programmers, we have a list of Beginner talks we're looking to have this year (for the Beginners' Track); drop us an email if you're interested on giving one of these and we'll let you know what the options are; if you already have a beginner's talk in mind, by all means, submit it.

The Call for Presentations opens on February 1st.

Edmund von der Burg realized two things:

1. prior to attending a YAPC, you have no clue to how important that can be to you, and to how much knowledge you can get there and how much it is going to improve your life;
2. there are very few young people at YAPCs, probably because, even though YAPC is an inexpensive conference, you still have to pay for your travel and lodging.

After realizing that, Edmund decided to do something about it. He checked with several people (including us) and thus this project began: http://www.send-a-newbie.com/
It's very simple, really. Anyone can donate (any sum of money) and anyone (who's under 25, never been to a YAPC and with no means of doing so on his/her own) can apply for a YAPC grant, which will cover the expenses of going and attending.
Think about it. You've been there, haven't you? Wanting to go to a conference for the very first time and not having enough money to do it?

• More information - http://www.send-a-newbie.com/info/about
• Donate - http://www.send-a-newbie.com/donate
• Apply - http://www.send-a-newbie.com/apply

Any amount is appreciated, and so is spreading the word, both to potential donors and to potential grantees.

To the ranks of logicLAB, SAPO, FCUL, Active State, TAP, O'Reilly, Apress, $foo magazine and o3 magazine, the following now also get on board:

Best Practical

They are the ones behind RT and SVK. Need we say more? It's wonderful to have them on board.

Caixa Mágica

Caixa Mágica (literally "Magic Box") is a Portuguese Open Source-oriented company who is responsible for the Linux distribution "Caixa Mágica", a Portuguese distribution with considerable success on public offices and public schools (just the fact that kids are now getting desktops with dual-boot systems on schools is wonderful).

The Perl Review

The oldest Perl magazine in print is also supporting us, and its subscribers will have probably seen our ad on its latest issue.

We're still talking to several other companies and it really looks like we're going to have a fantastic conference.

We created the YAPC::EU::2009 event on a couple of websites. Feel free to join the event...

• ...on LinkedIn - http://events.linkedin.com/pub/27994
• ...on Upcoming - http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/1483838
• ...on SlideShare - http://www.slideshare.net/event/yapceu2009

We noticed we hadn't defined a deadline for workshop submission nor a notification date for workshop speakers, so we're going to do that now.

• Deadline for workshop proposals - February 28th
• Notification to workshop speakers - March 15th

We're hard at work preparing the partner's program.
We're aiming at two days in and around Lisbon, at a cost somewhere between 100€ and 200€ (there will be rides and guides and all that) for adults and a reduced price for children.
At this point, we'd like some feedback from you (feel free to send email off-list, if you want to):

• Are you thinking of attending the partner program? (something like "Yes, my partner and two kids", for instance; this is just so we can get an estimate on numbers)
• Would you find a cost of 200€ to be an excessive (or perhaps even prohibitive) price to pay for this? (and, if so, what would be a more appropriate price, in your opinion?)
• Is there anything in particular you feel we should address, while preparing this program?

That's all for this newsletter
Feel free to contact us at organizers@yapceurope2009.org for anything conference related.
See you at the next newsletter,
the organizers

In our next newsletter:

• other payment means (especially for companies wanting to pay for a group of attendees)
• lots of other stuff