At the BSDCan 2024 closing session, I said we’d be transparent with our finances. Here is that report.
This summary excludes colocated events such as bhyvecon and the FreeBSD Developer Summit. While BSDCan provides considerable logistical support for these events, they pay their own expenses. We encourage these organizations to become BSDCan sponsors once they can. If you have a BSD-related event that you would like to host around BSDCan, do let us know.
We’re a Canadian conference, so amounts are in CAD. Numbers will not add up perfectly due to rounding.
Our income:
Registration $27,000
Sponsors $76,000
Misc $300
Total Income $104,000
Expenses:
Speaker travel $35,000
Speaker hotel $9,000
Food $15,000
Facilities $15,000
Closing party $11,000
Tshirts+totes $5,000
Miscellaneous $6,000
Total Expenses: 96,000
One of our goals is to have sufficient funding to pay deposits and fees due before we open registration. In 2024, Colin Percival fronted those expenses. While we reimbursed him once sponsor and registration funds arrived, “borrow an organizer’s credit card” is not a viable long term strategy.
We do sincerely thank Colin for his faith and trust in us.
We now have nearly $8,000 towards self-sustainability. We’re working to gather sponsor support earlier so we can avoid loans from the committee.
At the finance level, one of the things I’m notably proud of is that our travel team reimbursed most speaker travel expenses within a month. A couple people took longer for logistical reasons. We’re changing our CFP to gather basic reimbursement information up front, so that we can quickly reimburse everyone next year.
The goal of 2024 was to replicate the traditional BSDCan experience with our new committee. We wanted to learn what worked well and what could easily be changed. With our deeper understanding of the con’s finances, we’ll be looking at how to make BSDCan 2025 even better. I can already promise two things:
- an upgraded menu throughout
- announcing the BSDCan 2025 dates at EuroBSDCon
Speaking slightly more personally for a moment: my goal in taking over BSDCan was to transform it into a self-sustaining team effort supported and run by the community. It would do no good to transform BSDCan from the “Magnificent Dan and Adam Show” into the “Less Magnificent But More Snarky MWL Show.” Finance is integral to that effort. I am delighted with what the volunteers have accomplished, and look forward to handing the 2026 con chair (Patrick McEvoy) a functional and financially sustainable conference.