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* Venue negotiation takes a significant amount of time. Total of nearly four (5) months of visits, informational calls, and negotiations.
* Hotel block negotiations are valuable, especially in the fine print of cancellation clauses, re-selling of unsold rooms, penalties of underselling, and scheduled kickbacks at certain increments.
* When looking at space capacities, make sure you find out how many attendees can REALLY fit in a given space. The advertised numbers seem to be artificially inflated; ask to see a room layout graphic with A/V in place (we lost 15% of stated capacity at least to A/V).* Regardless of how strongly we communicate to the venue the pressures we'll be placing on their wifi, they almost always have trouble keeping up with our connection weight(especially hotels).
'''Registration'''
* 46.8% of the estimated cost of C4L2014 was provided by sponsorships. The registration cost of $165 per person covered another 46.8%. The remaining balance of C4L2013 covered the remaining 6-7%.
* To keep registration costs low, it is critical the Sponsorship Committee raise a minimum of $50,000 per year.
* The [http://code4lib.org/node/487|Code4Lib2014 Sponsorship Prospectus ] was a '''significant''' tool in raising money this year.
'''T-shirts'''
* Coffee in unlimited quantities is valued more highly than food at breaks.
* Using negotiation to buy "off menu" will save money.
* Make sure that you ask about dietary requirements during registration so that you can accommodate vegan / vegetarian / gluten-free, etc.
'''Pre-Conferences'''
* Ask ahead of time to find out if pre-conf organizers are planning to open their pre-confs to non-conference attendees.
* Some preconferences work a lot better with special seating arrangements, enrollment caps, etc. Some support for allowing preconf presenters to request/implement such arrangements would be worth considering.
* Pre-conference organizers will likely want to know before registration opens whether or not their pre-conference is actually going to happen (relevant if there are two many proposed for the space to support).
* Communicate early and often with organizers and have a plan for *having a solid plan* as early as possible (this can help some organizers provide the needed justification to their instituitions for travel support).
'''Organizing Volunteers'''
* It's helpful to have a local representative on all volunteer committees to help grease the wheels.
* A Google Calendar worked well this year in establishing all deadlines across all committees.
* A regularly occurring meeting of some planning group helps keep things moving.
* See [documentation and timelines|http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/Code4Lib_2014_Conference_Planning_Volunteers] for 2014 volunteer committees.
'''IRC'''
*Pay attention to the IPs you are assigned, make sure they are not PRIVATE (eg. 10,172.4-31,192.168)
