ClojureBridge is a free workshop, which sometimes leads to bad attendance. Especially, in big cities, attendace is a serious problem. Organizers get a bunch of subscribers, find a bunch of teachers not to leave students behind, and order bunch of food to meet with the number of expecting attendees. Everything is ready. Then, the workshop starts. Organizers see only a few attendees despite the big subscribers list...
Unfortunately, there are many people who don't weigh a free workshop. They subscribe instantly and just don't show up. Some meetups charge small amout of money to lower no show rate. This may be the way. However, ClojureBridge is a free workshop. This is a philosophy of ClojureBridge described in What makes a workshop a ClojureBridge Workshop? . Organizers, please don't rely on money to improve attendance.
We understand paying money works in the big cities. Also, the situation varies country to country, or region to region. However, there are certain number of people who don't have their own credit card for payment. We may kick such people out from ClojureBridge workshop.
Another reason is we want to lower the barrier to get started. Paying money on the website will add an obstacle though it's small. We may discourage people who are about to make the very first step of programming.
Even in the big cities, some workshops have made a great attendance. How did they do? Here're tips to improve attendance.
Although organizers' work load will go up, this works well. Send out confirmation and require a response to the confirmation. It's good to notify approved attendees to cancel if their schedule changes.
When the first strategy doesn't work, it's better to add a selection process. This will add further work load to organizers, but works better. For example, ask subscribers to write thier story, passion, or other, why they want to attend. People who have good reasons will show up. Downside of this selection process is, organiers may get complaints from who aren't selected. Avoid writing a specific reason of rejection. It would be good, "we selected beginners" or such, something very general.
RailsBridge/RailsGirls workshops are a template of ClojureBridge, so it is a two-day workshop. However, requiring attendees to show up both two days may be the reason of bad attendance. Friday evening traffic may be very bad which makes enough reason of no show. Sometime, people commmute to downtown spending long time. Dropping by after a day work is ok, but on Saturday morning, they may loose motivation to be back to downtown again.
For RailsBridge/RailsGirls, installing Ruby is a big stuff, sometime problematic. In general, the workshop requires the latest or newer version of Ruby to run newer version of Rails. It's safe to finish all installation on Friday. However, we are on Java. Downloading takes long, but normally the installation goes smoothly. Except Windows 7 users with old Java version setup, Java installation won't take long. Other installations won't take long as well. We may cut downloading time short by preparing USB with already downloaded archives.
If you orgnized the workshop in a big city and made a good attendance, please share what worked well.