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Over 500 people have registered at drupalcon.org! But far fewer have paid for registration. One of the reasons is they are now doing the delicate dance of asking their boss if they can go to Drupalcon.

Here's a few tips for getting your boss to pay for a Drupalcon.

Understand your boss

Your boss is busy. It helps to know what is on your boss's plate and what your boss's priorities are. Is it a budget for the new year? A client deliverable? Hiring? Reducing expenses? Make sure you know and try figure out how having a happy, well trained, motivated employee who is willing to go the extra mile will make your boss's life easier.

  • Does your boss need to hire people? Tell her about the Job Fair.
  • Does your boss need more customers? There will be lots of customers at the industry networking events.
  • Does your boss need you to do more with less? A week of conference training will make you faster because you've learned the pitfalls and best practices.
  • Does your boss want to know when critical modules will be upgraded to Drupal 6? Good thing you bought dinner for that module's maintainer - she owes you one!

Budget
Show your boss you are committed to Drupalcon by coming prepared with a budget. Here's a breakdown of costs you want to present.

  • Travel: My favorite travel search engine is Kayak.com. It gives you a lot of options, and allows you to be flexible on dates. If you can, try including a Saturday in your flight and see if it reduces the total cost. If you are flying internationally, a direct flight to NYC allows you to take the Accela express right near to the Boston Conference and Exposition Center.
  • Accommodations: Kayak.com is your friend. But consider some more creative options like a hostel, couchsurfing.com, sharing a room with a colleague, or renting a car and staying outside the city. I've stayed in Boston recently and found Motel 6 or hotels in Saugus to be below $70 a night. Start working your social networks like classmates.com, facebook.com, linkedin.com, or http://groups.drupal.org/boston. Trust me you know someone in Boston and they might be willing to put you up for a night or two.
  • Food: The conference fee includes morning snacks like coffee, help with lunch, and an afternoon snack. Offer to be frugal by avoiding expensive restaurant meals. Jump into #drupal-support and offer to answer questions in exchange for a dinner at Drupalcon.

    • Write a report, before you go

    If you have colleagues, particularly colleagues who also want to go to Drupalcon, consider writing a report about what you plan to learn and how it will be useful to the company. Writing a report shows initiative and makes it easy to cut and paste sessions summaries to complete your report when you get back. Go ahead and publish it in advance, on your company blog. You've made a public pronouncement, you have to follow through, unless your boss doesn't let you go!

    Benefits

    We've designed the conference program to have tracks: business and marketing, design and user experience, site building. This makes it easier it to sell your boss that you'll be attending relevant sessions related to your job.

    Identify a technology that's important to your boss or customer. Then find an expert. Then tell your boss that the expert will be at Drupalcon. Then send a link to this blog post to the expert.

    Closing the deal

    If you think it will help, I'll be happy to call your boss and explain why I think it's important for to you attend Drupalcon. Send me a link to your drupal.org user track, and tell me about your upcoming project.

    Still can't go?
    Did you hear about that flu bug that was going around? Really nasty. I hear it kept you in bed for four days (March 3rd-6th). Everybody was talking about it at the Drupal job fair ;-)

    Sources: http://www.usereffect.com/topic/getting-your-boss-to-pay-for-conferences