So ready for our next experiment?
We’re going to be transparent about how we plan this event, about the choices we make and our budget. This will be an evolving page as we make changes. It will be separated into 4 categories: Overall, the Home Edition, In-Person Event, and How You Can Help.
Overall
Overall ACC-WW has some guiding principles:
- Equitable availability over equal availability (this is reflected in how we establish pricing and session timing for the Home Edition; it is also reflected in some of the base technologies we use)
- Emergent and participatory over planned sessions (this is reflected in the unconference structures we choose)
- Ergonomic form over extensive features (this is reflected in the limited set of common technology we try and use, particularly in the Home Edition version)
One of the ways you see these principles play out is how we have our tickets arranged for the events. We have ticket prices established around ‘zones’ for the virtual event and and also by wealthier regions and “rest of world”. This is an attempt at ensuring equitable access. We are trying to ensure participation worldwide and not be what could easily be just a US Camp.
Home Edition
Fitting with the above, we have set pricing based on general incomes based on what people generally make. Some countries are wealthy and some countries are more developing. We have tried to make our pricing choices with this in mind.
We focus a lot of convenience to the volunteer facilitators for our timing of sessions. We plan 3 sessions, which we also hope have at least one session convenient to you as a participant. Will the timing be perfect, probably not. We just hope it is good enough that you will set aside the time to register, attend, learn, and connect with others.
Now that we are having an in-person event, funds we make from the virtual event will augment funds we pull in from those ticket sales to help fund the event.
We do realize that some tickets will sell out quickly and others will not. For the virtual event where a ‘zone’ may sell out, we’ll just add more periodically. Our event size isn’t truly restricted.
In-Person
The in-person event is considerably more involved and expensive. We’ll continuously add details to this page as decisions are made. We’ll start with the our backlog of items in priority order:
- Venue (without a location it won’t happen) [Venue costs alone are $8000 for the Friday through Sunday. ]
- Facilitator (the facilitator is a volunteer, preferably from outside the host country, so flight and a fewnight’s hotel costs are covered) [$TBD for her flight, still working out the rooms.]
- Supplies (flipcharts, post-its, etc.) [$TBD]
- Snacks, water, coffee [$TBD] THIS MAY BE OUR CUTOFF.
- Lunch on Sat [$TBD]
- Food for Networking on either Friday or Sat [$TBD]
- Lunch on Sun [$TBD]
- Food for Networking on the other night we didn’t choose from above [$TBD]
Current net ticket sales for ACC-WW are $___. ACC-WW(HE) net sales are at $___ even. This makes total revenue $____ against $____ in current obligated funds.
We sometimes offer sales of some form of swag as an optional ticket. We may do that this year.
We will periodically look at sales in the regions and make minor adjustments, taking a few tickets away from regions that are underselling and adding to regions that are sold out or are close to selling out. Again, we’re trying for equitable distribution. Changes will be small until June where these adjustments will become larger. For the in-person camp, we may be able to increase the size of the participants as we went with a venue that can support a good number of people.
One thing to note – normally, we can expect the Agile Alliance to cover additional costs. This keeps the registration costs lower as we essentially lose money. That is the intent behind the Member Initiatives; the Alliance pays for activities to happen. Unfortunately, ever since when the COVID pandemic hit, the Alliance has been having its own financial difficulties. The large Agile 20XX conference is the largest revenue source for the Alliance and this then funds all of the ongoing initiatives throughout the year. With one year losing money (2020) and another where money didn’t come in at all, Agile Coach Camp Worldwide will need to break even. We can draw upon Alliance funds, but we need to be able to operate without or at least minimum net loss.
This is reflected in our ticket prices being somewhat higher this year (though not tremendously given inflation). We also need to do well in the Home Edition version of the Camp to roll those funds in helping fund the in-person Camp. It will also likely be that our we won’t get as far down in our priority list as we have in the past.
Some may ask, why not get sponsors? ACC-WW is intended to be funded fully funded as a member initiative by the Agile Alliance. This keeps us free from strings some sponsors want to entangle a group with…
You Can Help!
How can you help? Get the word out to people – particularly those outside of North America that are coming to Agile 2023. Left from last year — > We currently have only a few people registered from Europe and none from other parts of the world. The US tickets sell out quickly because it is local and easy for traveling. To be Worldwide though, it would greatly benefit from representation from other countries. < — this will be updated as we see tickets sell.
Agile Coach Camp Worldwide 