Sponsorship hasn't come in like I had anticipated for the Open Source Symposium. If something doesn't happen soon, it looks like I'll be sponsoring the conference out of my own pocket. It's not too bad, only a couple thousand $$, but that's not how I'd like to spend that money.
I took a gamble on making the cost free for attendees with the expectation of getting enough sponsorship money to cover the costs. So far it's a bad move. I'll likely mark the 'free' price as early bird, and change it to $10 to recover at least some of the costs. I have a $100 'Advocate' sponsorship level that attendees (or anyone for that matter) can buy. It was suggested that I put some wording up next to the 'Cost: FREE', encouraging people to donate to the conference in lieu of a registration fee. Hopefully that will generate a little more sponsorship, as well
I wanted to make the attendee cost free since San Angelo is a somewhat remote, small 100,000 population town in West Texas. I thought making it free would get a larger crowd. That part has paid off somewhat like expected. Now if I can just find a few thousand dollars burning holes in sponsors pockets :-)
