PSEWEB 2010 was a community organized event that hoped to get between 20 and 50 attendees.  When the numbers scaled up to 150, the community was what made us successful – but the task of organizing become too heavy for volunteers.

We had a lot of support & energy and the community definitely made it possible, but we ended up with a small handful of people putting in 60+ hours a week between February to May in order to handle the explosion. This isn’t something we can ask volunteers to take on again for year two.

I debated with a long time with a few people how to do the 2011 event – should it remain a community committee but pay a salary to an event organizer, should it go for profit, should we “sell” it to a vendor that would be motivated to keep it going?

PSEWEB is now a “business”

There’s no clear right answer, but what we’ve gone with is registering the event as a business, having me (Melissa) as the sole proprietor, and I’m making the commitment to run everything by an advisory board and the community as the event is planned.  It’s the same as last year, except that if the event is profitable, I will earn a little bit for my time.

The original goals of the conference (keeping reg cost low, being in Canada, offering affordable accommodations) are still in place, and my additional goals this year are to waive 100% of registration fees for speakers, bring in at least one very well-known keynote, and possibly subsidize the costs for long-distance attendees (people flying in from BC, etc) and offering a few scholarships for people who do not have the resources to attend at full price.  All of which make the chances of making significant profit pretty slim, but I wanted to be as transparent as possible – possibly too transparent?

What do you think? What was your reaction to the news? I’m fairly uncomfortable with money, and am more comfortable in a non-profit environment (I’ve ran non-profits in the past), but it seems like this is the right direction to me.

Thank you to everyone who was part of PSEWEB 2010, Thank you to our awesome advisory board who I will announce shortly, and Thank you to everyone in advance for having faith in the new structure of the event – 2011 will benefit from 12 months of attention and careful planning and I have very high goals for the final result next May.

As always, please join the advisory board and myself on our LinkedIn Discussion Group – which will be consulted throughout the year as the event evolves.

Cheers,

Melissa Cheater

info@pseweb.ca / @mmbc

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