In reply to Miroslav Glavic.

To be fair WordCamp organizers get as many sponsors as they possibly can.

For the location comment, the venues chosen are picked for a variety of reasons. First, you have to consider the usually hundreds of attendees that are coming. That alone usually limits you severely. From there, you have to work on cost. Most places don't give you that space for free. Most WordCamps, save for ones with extremely good sponsors like NYC, can't afford to use high-cost venues, like hotel based conference rooms. The reason most WordCamps use university and high tech college venues is because usually they are extremely cheap (in some cases free). Most of these venues give WordCamps this opportunity in exchange for some sort of advertising at the venue (like an inkind donation essentially), so your point on WordCamp's typical locations is completely irrelevant to your argument.

Most WordCamps that use catered lunches get them at an extremely discounted rate. Some venues, like for example the Sunday of WordCamp Miami 2013, simply brought in food trucks and let the attendees pay for their own lunch, instead of putting the cost in the ticket price. For most WordCamps, the cost of providing lunch is extremely cheap. Milwaukee, which I'll use as a general case here, provided lunch for Saturday and Sunday at a cost of $5/meal (per their reported budget). For most WordCamps, there is another benefit to providing lunch: people don't leave to go find their own lunch. By having people eat at the conference, it keeps the attendance rates high for the speakers directly after lunch, who people might miss coming back from lunch. And as for coffee, of the few WordCamps that provide it, its usually included in the aforementioned food cost. Lunch cost, for the most part, is completely irrelevant here.

At WordCamps that give out swag bags, usually majority of the items **are** from sponsors who donated them. The right to give away things in the swag bags (or the swag bags themselves) is bestowed in the sponsorship deals at most WordCamps. Again, completely irrelevant to your argument.

As for your argument on charging sponsors more or getting more sponsors, that's not feasible. Most of the "pillar" level sponsors, and such level, agree to sponsor entire contents, regions, and even in some cases all WordCamps. With 2 or so WordCamps every week, that's over a hundred WordCamps some of these sponsors are providing. Not only is that an incredible amount of generosity on their part, these sponsorships are negotiated by the Foundation in bulk. Each worldwide pillar sponsor (at least at rack rate) donates $163,050/year. Many WordCamps have difficulty finding sponsors as well to begin with. We've seen in the comments the testimony from Vancouver and Rio. For smaller WordCamps, particularly ones in smaller cities, or for WordCamps in highly competitive conference cities (Vancouver), your argument simply isn't feasible.

"Doesn’t the foundation pay for the meetup.com fees? They should pay the venue fees for all WordCamps."

The Foundation, to their credit, already does a lot. I'm not sure if you fully understand the costs of venues in some of the cities that WordCamps run in. San Francisco's venue last year alone costed them $30,000+. Unless you are volunteering to donate them like a million dollars a year to make this happen, its a pretty unfair argument to be making.

"Lower income hopeful attendees won’t be able to attend."
With WordCamps typically charging like $30 for a ticket, most attendees at a WordCamp will usually spend well more than that on lodging, food (outside of the camp), and transportation. At some point, WordCamps simply cannot be free. The value of the appearance of the conference would diminish. You would see people snapping up free tickets, simply because they can, and have a high turnover ratio. Ask any WordPress Meetup group organizer in a standard city about their typical ratio between the number of people that say "I am going" on meetup.com vs the number that actually show up. Cost of ticket, brings an incentive to show up, and an incentive to get the most out of the event. It encourages people to attend, not simply because it is free, but because they themselves value it.

That being said, lower income attendees are being given increasing considerations at WordCamps. The number of WordCamps this year that offered free or discounted student tickets is up. And San Francisco is providing an ambitious travel assistance program (hats off to them). Ultimately, the problem with providing discounted tickets to low income attendees is plagued by a variety of problems. How do you maintain privacy of attendees while simultaneously having them prove their income status to prevent assistance abuse? How do you go about defining low income? How do you vet the recipients? These problems, over time will have to be answered. I hope one day, WordCamps will be able to provide programs like the one SF is doing. Maybe the Foundation, or a someday established other charity will let people donate to a fund which disburses tickets and other needs, like the SF program. I think, depending on how SF's program goes this year, that could become more viable.

But at the end of the day, a $20 or $30 WordCamp ticket, is super cheap compared to a $500 or $1,000+ ticket to a comprable design or development conference. It's a really good price point. Not too cheap to diminish value and not to expensive to limit participation.