[BangPypers] Improving meetup attendance

[Anand Chitipothu]

On Mon, Mar 20, 2017 at 8:32 PM, kracekumar ramaraju <
kracethekingmaker at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi
>
>  As of today, there are 5394 members in BangPypers meetup [0]. For last
> meetup (IoT Workshop), 267 participants showed interest. We allowed 134
> RSVPs and waitlisted 133 attendees. As Nitin mentioned in previous thread,
> he couldn't attend the meetup since he was in waitlist. 75 people
> participated in the event. Turnout ratio was 56%. Our expectation was only
> 40% people would attend. That's the rationale behind 134 RSVP limit.
>
> This kind of scenario happens at least once or twice in a year.
>
> To solve the RSVP problem, few meetups charge a monetary fee of 100Rs [1]
> and return the amount when participant shows up on the event day(after
> deducting gateway costs). Some meetup [2] donates the collected fee to
> organizations like EFF, FSF, Software Freedom Conservancy and other
> non-profit organization. Some meetup uses the amount to distribute goodies
> to the speaker, and spend on snacks and food. The meetup tried charging a
> small amount and now reverted [3].
>
> The collecting money has administrative work - Use one of the organizer
> bank accounts, record attended participants, return payment (not sure
> payment gateways will be happy returning money for the majority of
> transactions).
>
> Will you be interested in paying for the meetup with a refund?
> I'd like to hear input from others regarding in this matter from all front.
>

Having a small barrier of entry is good to eliminate noise. To make things
easy to manage, you can probably take help of PSSI in managing payments.
Also using bank account of one of the organizers may create accounting/tax
issues for him.

Good to see 75 people attending the meetup and waiting list. Good work,
organizers!

Anand