OuiShare Fest Financials

How is OuiShare Fest funded?
OuiShare Fest has always aimed to be as independant as possible. Yet organizing a 3-day conference for 1500 people is a complex and costly endeavour that requires a team of 15-20 people to work for 1 year. Therefore we are recurringly faced with the challenge of finding the best trade-off between independance and ability to organize this highly ambitious project. Since many members of the OuiShare community and our larger network that would like to attend the event do not all have the ressources to pay for tickets at a price that would cover all costs of the event, we have attempted to find a pricing model that enables people with different financial situations to attend.

The OS Fest funding model
consists of:


 * Sponsorships


 * Ticket sales, with very cheap or free tickets that are subsidized by more expensive tickets

To ensure our independance from political and corporate interests as well as create an event that can self-sustain itself, it would of course be ideal to fund the event through ticket sales only. However as described above this is not a financially viable option for a significant part of the OuiShare Fest audience and would result in a ticket prices of 500 - 600 € per person. Therefore we have chosen the tiered and subsidized pricing model, while trying to limit our dependency on sponsorships.

Ways for people with little financial resources to attend

 * apply for a Hacker & Students Ticket for 50 € (covers basic foods costs for 3 days) -- 150 Tickets
 * join as a volunteer -- approx 80 Tickets
 * become a program contributor by submitting a proposal to our call -- approx. 150 - 200

In conclusion,the sponsorships and ticket prices visible on the website subsidize the other 1/3 - 1/2 of attendees.

It is also to be noted that the team undergoes large efforts to keep the costs of the event as low as possible and do as much as we can ourselves or with volunteers, while striving towards a high standard of Zero Waste Events (which can sometimes lead to higher costs in the short term). In comparison to other business events of its kind, the costs of OuiShare Fest are comparably low.

The non-profit organization behind OuiShare Fest is OuiShare. To understand more about how OuiShare is funded,>> read more here

Why organize the event in big (expensive) cities?
Couldn't the event be much cheaper to organize if it took place somewhere in the countryside instead of metropolitan cities like Paris, Barcelona or Rio?

Since we are always thinking about ways to make OuiShare Fest more affordable, of course we have thought about such options. However there are several reasons why for now, it has not been an option worth considering:
 * accessiblity of the location for attendees and in terms of logistics
 * ability to fund the event: the majority of our partners are based in cities and are less interested in funding an event that is far away from them.
 * team: you can only organize an event this size if you have a motivated and strong team on site. Therefore we organize OuiShare Fests based on where we find a team that would like to take on this challenge.

Annual Budget
The overall budget of OuiShare Fest in Paris has been between 150 000 € (in 2013) and 500 000 €, including the personnel costs. It must be noted that for the organization of the first edition in 2013, the team consisted of volunteers only and the professional part of the event was only 2 days. Since it has been our top priority to be able to pay team members an adequate wage for their work, this is the main reason why the budget has increased every year.

2016 Budget
See full provisionary 2016 budget (Status: November 2015)

Team Organization
To find out more about how the Fest team is organized and remunerated internally, click here