Hacker News London - January Meet-up | Hacker News Reader

Hacker News London - January Meet-up

meetup.com

25 pointsPeroni11 comments

Meet-up shows that there is now a charge of GBP6 ($10) for that meeting - can anyone explain what that will be for

FTFA.

> First of all, thank you for the overwhelming support many of you expressed towards charging an entry fee for the event. It has been a tough decision to make, but ultimately this will help make the event sustainable. I am also in the final stages of setting a non-profit organisation that will be in charge of running the events.

So he has a reason above just his polishing his ego to keep organising them.

To cover our costs such as venue, food, drink, video, presenter, as well as my time as organiser. As I mentioned on the event page I am setting up the event as a non-profit organisation. Any money left over from the event will ploughed back into the production of future events. It has been a tough decision to make however it will make the event sustainable for the long term. I mailed out the proposal over a week ago and received huge support in favour of the changes.

Feel free to let me know your thoughts. My email is d.grabov@gmail.com, in case you wish to contact me directly.

thanks for the explanation Dmitri - enjoyed the past meetings - see you at the Boys school end of the month

Given the size of the organisation (aka you), there's really no difference between no-profit and paying yourself or for-profit - other than paperwork. I assume you will pay yourself, at least a little, given you say "as well as my time".

Not saying you shouldn't charge or that you don't deserve to be compensated for your effort - I'm just not a fan of chucking around non-profit status to seem less money-grabbing when it doesn't mean anything, and given nobody will consider you money-grabbing anyway it seems pointless in this case :)

I'm one of the organisers so I'll do my best to explain.

The decision to charge was made by Dmitri and his reply covers the basics.

He is the primary organiser and the guy who established the meet-up back when it was held in someones living room to an audience of 20 people.

Today we have over 4,000 members and an average monthly attendance of 500 people. Apparently we are now the largest monthly tech meet-up in Europe and organising such an event whilst maintaining a full-time job on the side takes a huge effort. Despite my best efforts to help, almost all of Dmitri's spare time is dedicated to this event and it's because of his dedication that the event has evolved into the behemoth we have on our hands.

Despite having generous sponsors, we only barely cover our costs every month so the event is in the process of being established as a not-for-profit organisation and we are now charging an entry fee so that we can develop a fund that will give Dmitri the resources to help grow the event even further and attract more people like Joel Spolsky and Eben Upton to come and spend time enlightening the London tech community.

I think £6 is more than reasonable.

So, uh, you think it's expensive? Or it's so reasonable, it's silly to complain? Or was that the joke?

"More than reasonable" = Very reasonable.

Same time as UX Café, at Campus. That's a shame.

In London you almost always have a set of meetings in the same interest groups to choose from - particularly popular: last Wednesdays, Thursdays of the month.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com