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I've been reading this dicussion, and have a few thoughts:
First off, a consideration of what the event coordinator has to put in:
- A fair bit of time, sure, not 1000s of hours (for one event), 1000s of
hours is a full time job... Hundreds of hours maybe
- There are upfront costs that must be paid before registration money comes
in - this is an investment - investments, especially ones of thousands of
dollars, deserve a payback
Some general thoughts:
- Any sensible event will set aside a chunk (most to all depending on how
mature the event is) to jump start the following years event, this minimizes
the investment risk
- If there really is 1000s of dollars left over, and a possibility of the
event coordinator taking some home, that's totally fine with me, though as a
(past and potential future) volunteer, I would like to know that's a
possibility. I'd also like to see some re-imbursement (free registration,
hotel, transportation costs, phone bills, etc.) for the volunteers.
- A thought on compensating volunteers - now that the door prize pool seems
smaller, and the number of attendees is larger, personally, I'd rather just
see the door prizes go to the volunteers.
- Others have mentioned GenCon, there's a commercially run event. There are
some volunteers who still pay registration, others who are refunded after
the event. But here's an interesting twist - I'm seriously considering in
the future not bothering with a GM badge, because the hassles are too much,
the compensation is minimal, I'd rather feel more freedom to cancel a game
because I'm wiped out. So there I am actually arguing against compensation
of volunteers - what it comes down to is that free registration is close to
meaningless to me compared to all my other costs of attending, I'd rather do
it all for free, or have much more of it compensated.
- There's a consideration to compensating people for bringing displays -
however - that's a sticky wicket if there ever was one. Who gets compensated
and who doesn't? BrickFest could never afford to have all the people
bringing MOCs be compensated, plus it would end up seeming horribly unfair,
some pimply kid gets compensated for his little barely modified stock set
the same as the guy who fills a van with a lovingly crafted huge display
(ok, so maybe that guy gets his gas paid also and the pimply kid just gets
in free - but where do you set the line).
- If this year's BrickFest was put on by Brick Journal as a fund-raiser for
the magazine, I think that's totally cool. I'd love to see a real print fan
magazine launch, and if running a BrickFest or two is what it takes to build
the capital to do so, what a cool way to raise that capital. Far better than
paying for a pre-subscription and never seeing your magazine (and as far as
I have heard, BrickFest has never stiffed any of it's suppliers unlike a
certain other event - that was also tied to a fan magazine....).
- I would personally prefer to only have one public show day, because that
is work that takes away from the fun. With two show days, I would be more
interested in seeing some kind of compensation, but see the above for
thoughts on what it takes for that compensation to be worthwhile.
So in the end, I think it's totally reasonable to ask the question "Where is
the money going." I think it's also totally reasonable for the response to
be any of the following "It goes into a fund for future events." "It goes
directly into my pocket." "It's none of your business." I also think it's
reasonable for the individual asking the question to respond to those
answers with anything from "Sounds cool!" to "Ok, I'm not willing to pay $60
to help you make money, see ya later!" with "Well, if that's what you're
doing, I'd like some compensation, say a free room and partial payment for
transportation." in between.
What I don't like is acusations based on speculation. If you want to
publicize the answer given (subject to any agreement the answer came with),
and your response, fine. But don't make an accusation and declaration based
on speculation.
Frank
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