[AH] Attendance Predictions

[Nicholas Shectman <palmwiz@gmail.com>]

We have 1157 people registered for the convention.  This includes the 
earned and program comps but not the event comps.  I believe that past 
December-25 registration counts have also not included the event comps, 
but I'm not sure about that.

I don't have the breakdown exactly, but in the past (absent snowstorms) 
the December-25 reg count has been strongly predictive of the actual reg 
count, and the numbers we're looking at today point at an attendance of 
around 2460.

Most of the budgeting we have done is based on an attendance of 2300, 
since that was the largest con we'd seen.  Some stuff may have been 
based on a smaller attendance than that.  But for the most part we are 
looking at about a six or seven percent increase in membership over what 
we thought when we were budgeting.

We do have a cap which provides a worst-case budgeting scenario.  That 
cap is 2500 total members, without regard to registration type.  I and 
the eboard, in consultation with certain key staff, can raise it as high 
as 2750 if we want.  I'll say now that in my opinion the capacity of the 
hotel for a con like ours is 2700 people, so I'd be surprised to see the 
cap raised further than 2700, and for things like the number of blank 
badges to buy I think we can budget based on that.

So:  what things need more money?  My off the cuff guess is that this is:

- Con Suite (linearly with the number of memberships)
- Publications (not linear, since setup charges won't change)
- Registration (unless reg was already planning to buy 2750 badges as a 
worst-case plan)

What am I missing?

Pubs, what are your incremental costs?

Anyone want to chime in with thoughts on the continued validity of this 
predictor, given the general shift from at-con reg to online late 
prereg?  The 1157 number includes 18 people who have already registered 
at the at-con rate, and most of our historical data does not include any 
such memberships.

					-/phi