Organizing conferences costs time and money, like many other things in the Fediverse. We believe the sooner the Fediverse finds a way to pay for itself that doesn’t depend on the heroic efforts of a small number of individuals, the better. We want to build something that is sustainable, and to do that, it needs to know how to pay for itself.
It aligns the objectives between organizers and attendees, and keeps us organizers focused on what you want out of the conference; as opposed to us pushing an agenda, or letting a sponsor undule influence the agenda.
In our long experience organizing conferences we have learned that people who pay for an event are much more likely to actually attend. Free-of-charge conferences often have more no-show’s then actual attendees.