I realize I should have done a better job of explaining the new price structure of LIFT before opening registrations. Here is the background information on why we raised the price this year:

• LIFT is a team of 25 people, with at least 4 of them (outside of me working 100%) dedicating more than 40% of their time to the event. For two years we have done this without salary and this is simply not possible anymore. So we are getting paid for our work, probably at the lowest rate we’ll all been working for ever, but hey, at least enough to keep a roof above our heads. This does not mean the event isn’t non profit, but we can’t have an event like LIFT happening without salaries anymore.
• The event gets better every year, and this year we will have much bigger (=expensive) social events, and the ticket includes the fondue.
• We have a five year deal with our conference center where the discount they give us gets smaller and smaller every year. They do this to help new conferences. Year three into the deal, we pay 15% more than the previous year.
• I decided to put much more budget in the artistic activities around the conference.
• The price of LIFT was backfiring on us. In the survey one third of people said “LIFT is worth more than what I paid for”. I have had numerous feedback of people who told me “LIFT is so cheap we expect it to be badly organized”.

Regarding the student discount:

• Last year the price was 400CHF which is ALREADY too expensive for students. 550 or 400 is the same for them. Too much. So we decided to go the way many other conferences go: you charge more to those who can pay and try to setup free tickets for students. So we have these 20 tickets thanks to the GRS, and are discussing with the universities around here to have more. Bottom line we should have around 50 free tickets for students. Now it’s up to schools to get their students in, like the University of Lausanne, the IVREA or the UMEA design institute did the previous years.
• For the first two years, student price = abuse! We had at least 50% of people asking for the price and NOT deserving it.
• Overall and before making all these decisions, I made the count and last year we had 50 people from the academic world. This year we should have a similar situation, with them paying even LESS money than ever.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 27th, 2007 at 12:47 pm and is filed under lift. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.