2023 Transparency Report

transparency report-2023 bear logo

In 2023 we had the pleasure to organize the 5th edition of JSHeroes - one of the biggest software development conferences in South-East Europe, and one of the most popular tech events in Romania. This time, we decided to come back to a two-day event, a format that used to be our way to go in a pre-pandemic world. The event took place on May 18th and 19th, in Cluj-Napoca, and was organized by JSHeroes, one of the most active tech communities in Europe.

We strongly believe that the community model is the best environment for learning, so we’re publishing all the data about this conference, in full transparency, to make it easier for other communities to build on our knowledge and organize even better events.

As promised, we came back with some updates regarding the conference’s budget. It was calculated as to cover all the costs for the participants and the remainder will be redirected to supporting the next edition + events happening in the community along the year.

In our previous article we presented the estimates so we can all make an idea of what organizing a conference means in terms of costs (but not only) and now we’ve updated them and we got to some conclusions that we hope to be useful for other communities organizing a conference:

Summary

  • Cost: 97.4K EUR
  • Profit:  18K EUR
  • Attendees:  600
  • Days:  2
  • Speakers:  19

Expenses

  • Staff - 3K EUR (the cost is so low because most of the work is done by volunteers and we need extra help for accounting services and operations)
  • Speakers and Ambassadors (flight tickets, accommodation, leisure trip, gift bags, going out) - 11.8K + 10K transport EUR (as we’ve got some reimbursements for the pandemics period cancelled edition, the estimated cost decreased)
  • Venue + food & drinks (3 coffee breaks/day + 1 lunch/day for every attendee) - 41.5K EUR
  • Photo-video services  - 4.9K EUR
  • Swag (stickers, badges), Promotional stuff (giveaways) - 5K EUR
  • Promotional campaigns - 100 EUR
  • Other services that cannot be covered by volunteers (e.g.: design, sketching during the conference) - 3.5K
  • Tools subscriptions (CFP, hosting) - 900 EUR
  • Venue services & design (Stage design - lights, scaffold, Barista, Photo booth) - 8.7K EUR
  • Fees (Ti.to, PayPal, Bank) - 2.5K EUR
  • MC (fee & costs) - 2K EUR
  • Costs that couldn’t be covered through partnerships (eg. ice-cream, water, gas) - 1.5K EUR

How did we manage to pay for all these things?

  • Tickets - after estimating the costs, we’ve calculated the tickets price so as to cover the conference price but to keep our non-profit scope. We managed to have 518 tickets sold: 160 Early bird tickets - 130 EUR, 358 Regular tickets - 180 EUR - Total: 85.2K EUR
  • Sponsors - whose only interest is to help the community grow by paying a fee for a special sponsorship package, recruitment-free, with only a few benefits as our purpose is not to get any kind of profit out of this but to get some help to organize a great event * 3.000 EUR/sponsorship package

There were 10 companies sponsoring us, both from Romania and from abroad. We are very thankful to: Evozon, Fortech, Accesa, Flowx.AI, Metro, Yonder, Darwin, Cloudflight, About you, Betfair. With their help we managed to raise 30.000 EUR.

The money left from the previous edition contributed a lot in removing the worries we had when starting to organize the 5th edition, as we were able to pay in advance for different services, as well as allowing us not to increase the ticket price and still pay speaker fees that accounted for 9.5K EUR.

This year’s remainder will be used to continue the plans we made for helping the growth of the community through the JSHeroes Meetups and events, as well as supporting next year’s event kick-start and speaker fees.

We hope you enjoyed our 2023 event and will join us again in 2024. Keep an eye on social media for news on the content, and make sure to secure your spot when you decide to join us, as you can already purchase the tickets for next year from our website.