Open Source Conferences Are Big Businesses

by Sam Dean - Apr. 29, 2010Comments (1)

Recently, we summed up some of the headlines from DrupalCon in San Francisco, the annual conference where thousands of people gather to discuss Drupal, the fast-rising open source content management system that OStatic itself is based on. We also did a series of guest posts in conjuntion with the conference. This year's conference was slightly hampered by the eruption of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull, which disrupted the travel plans of many people, but, by anyone's metrics the conference was a success. In fact, if you look at some of the metrics, DrupalCon illustrates the fact that open source conferences are big businesses.

Dries Buytaert, Drupal's founder, summarizes some of the numbers pertaining to DrupalCon in a blog post:

   * Roughly 3,000 registered attendees at an average ticket price of $205.
    * Trained 495 people on Drupal using 20 Drupal training classes.
    * Streamed 10 sessions live with up to 3,000 simultaneous viewers thanks to Brightcove.
    * Raised more than $400,000 USD from 50 sponsors.
    * $72,000 spent on coffee

Granted, Buytaert does cite nearly $700,000 in expenses related to the conference, but he also estimates $1,004,470 in revenues. DrupalCon makes clear why open source conferences continue to flourish. There are organic reasons why they do well, of course. Among those, open source projects are by nature community driven, and members of communities like to mingle and share ideas.

It's also clear from some of the metrics that Buytaert reports regarding live streaming of sessions and webcasting that new media is having a profound impact on open source conferences. Many people watched the free, streamed sessions from the conference, including some of the attendees who had to stay home due to the volcano eruption. It won't be a surprise to see live streaming from open source conferences become a fast-growing trend.