reoriginalize

Wow, Bar Camp. So thoroughly successful and just finished up the numbers and we came out just about right.

I certainly know why I never wanted to become an accountant.

A quick breakdown of the expenses:

• Food was by far the most expensive (sorta) at around $1150, breakfasts were cheapest as there were less people there and one breakfast isn’t included in that figure as it was supplied by the sponsor themselves. That also does not include one dinner as there was a special event that occupied one dinner time slot.
• Drinks and beer are cheap, around $380. We really didn’t end up needing as many beer sponsors as we had, although the party at Gordon Biersch helped a bit with that, and somebody’s non-sponsored late night beer run ended up providing far more beer than we knew what to do with. We drank — and how! — but the end was nowhere in sight.
• T-shirts weighed in heavily as well, around $550, and we didn’t have nearly enough to give to everybody. We’re still working on that.
• The Gordon Biersch party was actually more expensive than the entire rest of the camp combined, but would not have happened without generous donations from sponsors who covered the entire cost.

Altogether, I’d estimate (making up the couple missing meals) that for the average of 50 people we had for any given meal, the entire thing could have been put on, without the perks like t-shirts and the party at Gordon Biersch, for less than $1800. As it is we came out almost even and a few of us organizer-types are happy to eat the difference.

Now, to lay roses at the feet of our generous sponsors. We talked about them a bit at the camp, but I did promise to blog about them (yanking snippets from their site where applicable), so here you go.

Special thanks to these first few for covering the location (SocialText!) and the larger costs associated with the camp.

• SocialText — “The quickest way to get everybody on the same page.”
• Technorati — “Technorati brings you what’s happening on the web, right now.”
• WordPress — “WordPress.com is an easy and powerful way to start blogging.”
• Flock — “We’re introducing the world’s most innovative social browsing experience.”

Thanks to these sponsors for supplying the food (ice cream!), drinks, snacks and love for the camp:

• CastPost — “The easiest way to broadcast your personal video and audio clips”
• Etheric — “The Bay Area’s best broadband”
• Flickr — “The best way to store, search, sort and share your photos.”
• LaughingSquid — “Underground art, culture and technology from San Francisco and beyond.”
• No Starch Press — “The finest in geek entertainment.”
• Simpli Hosting — “100% uptime made simple.”
• SimplyHired — “Search every job on the planet.”
• smugmug — “The ultimate in photo sharing.”
• SourceLabs — “SourceLabsâ„¢ provides Dependable Open Source Systems and premium support and maintenance subscriptions for enterprise IT organizations.”
• Virtual.Net — “Technical Project Management, ISP/ASP Architecture & Deployment”

Many thanks also to the people and companies who chipped in to offset some of the unforeseen costs associated with the large turnout.

And one final set of thank-yous to the organizers who helped bring this all together in… reverse alphabetical order of last names (this might get tricky). David Weekly, Eris Stassi, Kragen Sitaker, Dorrian Porter, Matt Mullenweg, Chris Messina, Ross Mayfield, Kevin Marks, Jeff Lindsay, Ryan King, Kitt Hodsden, Tantek Çelik and Scott Beale, y’all are the best.

If I forgot anybody, please nail me in the leg with a stun gun.

Technorati Tags: barcamp, bayarea, community

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