CGarchitect Visualization Conference Kickstarter

[Jeff Mottle]

Appreciate all of your feedback, I have been reading it all. We had potentially planned to record some sessions, but only if we exceeded our funding goal as it's quite expensive to do. It's a bit more complicated than just throwing up a camera and press record. As I learned after the hundreds hours of research and executing our CGschool masterclasses last year. Also, often times presenters just don't want or can't have their content recorded. Videos also tend to reduce attendance, which if it does not exceed a certain number, is no longer interesting for sponsors which are needed to make up the rest of the money required.

 

Conferences are a very complicated beast, much more so than I think many realize. I know pretty much every conference organizer that does conferences in 3D, VFX, or Arch Viz, and I can tell you that most are LUCKY if they don't lose money. None of us run these events trying to get rich. I've know many who have lost their shirts. Not sure if any of you knew, but those VisMasters conferences, lost between $30-40K every time we hosted them and the hard costs were around $200K. That did not even count the hundreds of man hours required to organize and run the event. If that was added in, you could probably add another $20K in losses. So you can't really make an apples to apples comparison in cost between the two.

 

Our goal for this Kickstarter is only to break even. ie. our time is not covered, and neither is any profit. Any potential to cover our time would come from whatever sponsorships we could get, which really only becomes interesting to sponsors when you are over 200 people. Which is what our Kickstarter goal is aimed at.

 

We do appreciate that the event is not cheap, but it's also about as cheap as you can get it before the quality sacrifices below a point where I feel it reflects poorly on my vision and name. I would rather not run an event, than to run one that is below my personal standard. I spend 3-4 months of every year attending events, so I know what works and what does not and I also know what I would want to see in an event that ensures people DO walk away with tangible benefits they can incorporate into their businesses and workflows.

 

By funding this through Kickstarter, we really had no choice but to do an all-inclusive rather than just a conference pass on it's own. I know it's harder for people to compare to other events this way, but from someone who attends dozens event each year and spends over $40K a year on travel, I can tell you it's very comparable to what I pay, no matter what event I attend.

 

In order to book an event for 200 people, you automatically eliminate 90% of hotels because they just don't have the space. Also, when you book a space at a hotel, they will give you the rooms for free, but it's contingent on us meeting certain food and beverage minimums and most importantly rooms. A hotel is not interested in letting anyone book their ballroom, unless they can actually make money and that happens on rooms and food. We could have just sold tickets, but if everyone tried to save $10 a night and booked at hotel X down the road, we may have had 200 people show up, but we lose our shirts in contract penalties that the hotel would impose for not meeting our minimums. For this event, we must fulfil $80K in Food and Beverage and $124K in rooms. That's just to book the ballroom and that is a deal. The Westin has been very accommodating and gave us room rates that are below what you would spend on almost any US business hotel.

 

Long story short, A LOT of work went into planning and budgeting this Kickstarter, so we did not just come up with these numbers randomly. Ten years ago when we stopped the VisMasters conferences, I vowed I would never get into conferences again due to the massive financial risks and stress. I worked production too for many years and pulled all nighters for some of the most demanding clients and met deadlines with hours to spare, but NOTHING even touches the stress that comes with running an event. I can't even begin to explain how draining it is. So next time you attend a conference, make sure you go out of your way to find and thank the organizer as they have sacrificed a ton for you to be there.

 

The only reason I even attempted this Kickstarter was because so many people expressed interest when it was originally going to be part of the NVIDIA GTC conference this month. I love this industry and all of the people in it, so when the NVIDIA thing fell through, I felt like I was letting all of you down, we scrambled to try to pull this off. Did you know we planned this entire thing in under 4 weeks? That's UNHEARD of. Normally events of this size and with this calibre and number of speakers, takes 3-6 months of planning alone. So if we did not cross every T and dot every I, you now know why. I think we provided enough info in our write up and FAQ to explain what the event will all be about, but if it's not enough well, it is what it is. We either succeed of fail, but at least we tried to get this event out there for everyone.

 

From Brian and I, we thank everyone who has backed us to date and hope everyone else will see our vision and help us push the funding over the goal.

 

Jeff