TomcatCon

Finances

Opened a separate (personal) bank account to use to receive funds from ticket sales and to reimburse expenses.

While some items were paid for in advance (e.g. materials for name badges) no expenditure was committed to unless there was sufficient projected income from confirmed ticket sales to cover. i.e. at no point was anyone at risk of financial loss.

Tracked all expenses and income for the event and reported it publicly. Reporting was after the event.

Events aim to break even with surplus from previous event used to pay upfront costs for the next.

Ticket Management

Ticket sales via EventBrite.

Ticket price set at £50. High enough to discourage no shows but low enough that attendees should find it easy to get the expense approved.

Session topics

The topics for the first event were selected based on a combination of know popular topics from past events and speaker choice. Also had an ask me anything session at the end of the day. Received useful community feedback from this session on possible future features.

Venue

Venue for first event handled entirely by sponsor.

Recording

Purchased a USB microphone and used this, combined with screen recording software on speaker's laptops to record session where possible.