Organizing conferences costs time and money, like many other things in the Fediverse. We believe the sooner the Fediverse finds a way to pay for itself that doesn’t depend on the heroic efforts of a small number of individuals, the better. We want to build something that is sustainable, and to do that, it needs to know how to pay for itself.
It aligns the objectives between organizers and attendees, and keeps us organizers focused on what you want out of the conference; as opposed to us pushing an agenda, or letting a sponsor undule influence the agenda.
In our long experience organizing conferences we have learned that people who pay for an event are much more likely to actually attend. Free-of-charge conferences often have more no-show’s then actual attendees.
It doesn’t really answer the question where the money is going, does it? Only why it’s being charged.
Edit:
Revenue from ticket sales goes to: paying for our online venue (QiQo), various supporting web services and automation, human support and facilitation, various promotional activities (handouts, stickers at other events, direct promotion to potential attendees / software demo participants / session hosts, social media), website management, graphic design, the editing of session notes and the production of demo videos published after the event, accounting and other bureaucracy and more.
The answer is one click away in their FAQ:
It doesn’t really answer the question where the money is going, does it? Only why it’s being charged.
Edit:
Thank you, I didn’t look carefully enough :)
TBF, I only found the FAQ link way down the page. It isn’t well advertised 🙂