Re: Worldcon To Offer "Taster Memberships"

Keith F. Lynch wrote:

Doug Wickstrom <nimshubur@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Five to seven thousand members is a convention so large that it's
unwieldy. It takes an incredible amount of effort and resources to
pull off, which is what drives the cost up.


Why don't the effort and resources scale? Twice the members might be
twice the effort and twice the resources, but should cost the same per
member. And how does Dragon*Con keep its cost down to $60 a member
when it's much larger than any Worldcon?

Same facility each year. Same (or similar) organization. Ability to amortize fixed organizational costs over time instead of having to act as a start-up every year. Long-term facilities contracts.

And as far as effort and resources: Tom Whitmore suggests that the number of layers of management needed for conventions of our sort is a fifth-power law; that is, for every power of five the membership grows, you need one more layer of management. (That is, once you get past the trivial cases at the low end.) Right now, Worldcon is sitting around the four-layer model, and the powers-of-five theory suggests that the model will work until the next power of five (around 13K attendees), after which you'd need another layer of managment and a new model.

Cost per member is _not_ linear, however, because facilities costs don't scale per member. They are a step function, where, once you grow past a certain threshold, you incur a bunch of fixed expenses that will stay the same for a given range of members. Once Worldcons grew into needing convention centers, we got into a case where our facilties cost were going to be about the same whether we had 4,000 or 10,000 attendees, and since we're at the lower end of that range, the cost per member went _up_, not down.

Cost per member will thus decrease as you approach the next breakpoint, at which point it will go up again.


--
---
Kevin Standlee
http://www.livejournal.com/users/kevin_standlee/
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Ass hole (fwd)
    ... I live in a developing country, ... My printer cost me R450. ... Member, ... Member, Mercury Amateur Radio Association- ...
    (Ubuntu)
  • Re: Worldcon To Offer "Taster Memberships"
    ... It takes an incredible amount of effort and resources to ... which is what drives the cost up. ... Twice the members might be ... And how does Dragon*Con keep its cost down to $60 a member ...
    (rec.arts.sf.fandom)
  • Re: Disney Vacation Club - Disney World
    ... I've been a member since 1997, so I know the answers to some of the ... As for buying during a WDW trip & having the cost of your resort ... Even when they deeply discount OKW or SSR ... and due to the increase in incredibly rude/ignorant guests out ...
    (rec.arts.disney.parks)
  • Re: Worldcon To Offer "Taster Memberships"
    ... It takes an incredible amount of effort and resources to ... which is what drives the cost up. ... Twice the members might be ... since the Convention Center's cost per member is much ...
    (rec.arts.sf.fandom)
  • Re: Passports again!
    ... Sue K wrote: ... Donkey breed society ofered anything remotely cost effective. ... especially as the non member rates are sooo much higher than the member ...
    (uk.rec.equestrian)