Hello,
adding news since last discussions here ;)
Here at Brazil, a company used to organize Moodle Moot Brasil with a private university since 2007.
In 2010, they got to know the "Moodle Brasil" community at https://moodle.org/course/view.php?id=35
and the "facilitator", Gilvan Marques, and I were asked to put our names on the "organization group" of the event as "community members".
This event was not sustainable: it costs R$150,00 to participants (our base salary is below R$800),
they produced many bags and printed papers, have expensive "coffee-breaks" and so. The company and the university behind this event said they had a R$35K cost to the event, to host 200 people.
Last year, on second semester, the real community unite to make the event happen again, this time in Florianópolis, a city in Brazil's south region.
The Federal University of Santa Catarina, a public university, gave the space for free (the only condition was that the event was free for participants) and a lot of people came.
We had no bags, no coffeee breaks. Everybody answered nicely and kindly to invitations to talk.
The event was a success, hosting 200 people and we got just R$2.5K from sponsors. Last day we got to the bar with all people and spent the R$300 that left from sponsors.
This year we will make the event again in Sao Paulo, on the same private University.
But now the event is "free for participants". The company that was behind it before is just one more sponsor, and the university gave the rooms for free. We got R$6K from sponsors this time and this will cover the organization costs with airplanes and hotels, make our website (www.moodlebrasil.org) live for many months in future and also we will buy an ssl certificate for the site.
Altough we have contacted all the Brazilian Moodle Partners, none was available to sponsor
nor even to participate. Some of them not even answered my emails.
The main point here is: you don't need to do everything just for money. I am not a professional "event organizer" or "community leader", I am a free software developer. I do this because i love it.The rest is a consequence.
Kind regards,
Daniel