Drupalcon Szeged 2008 registration opened!

Drupalcon Szeged 2008 registration opened earlier today, and some of the early birds are already in! We announced and explained pricing ten days ago. As we detailed, you can buy tickets for 80 EUR until the end of the month, and the price will increase to 120 EUR in July, move to 160 EUR at the start of August and end up as 200 EUR for people showing up without pre-paying.

Today, we launched the ticket registration system and several other components, which make up our Drupalcon registration process. We are not only selling tickets, you can optionally sign up for quite a few other things. We promised to sell shuttle bus seats, and although we did not manage to go below the train ticket prices, this service should be useful for those, who prefer to pre-organize their travel online, make sure to go with Drupalcon fellows from Budapest, and/or arrive too early or too late to take the train. We also offer hundreds of rooms in 18 different locations. Each location is mapped, we have directions from the locations to the venue, and pictures and website links where possible. Except around a dozen rooms, all have wired or wireless internet access, and we negotiated breakfast for you even in pensions, where these are otherwise not available.

We know some people would happily pay a bit more for the Drupalcon to further ensure its good quality and help make it possible to set the registration fee low enough for those, who otherwise cannot afford it. Therefore we added a way for each attendee to optionally sponsor the conference, getting a nice and exclusive t-shirt in the process. Finally, our organization partner, C&T prepared some tour ideas for you. You can sign up and express your interests in these options. If there is enough people signing up, C&T will organize the tours and discuss payment with you.

We heard that some people experience high flight prices, so additionally to trying to get good deals and putting our hands on hundreds of rooms to make sure you get what you want, we built in another nice feature: room sharing. Most of our rooms have multiple beds, so to cut your costs (and in true geek fashion), you can share your rooms and discuss sharing costs with your roommates. This is of course completely optional. Don't have colleagues coming with you to share rooms with, but still looking for someone to share with? Check your profile and make sure to mark yourself as looking to share your room with someone else. People will be able to contact you on your contact tab and discuss sharing with you. Another way to optimize your costs this Drupalcon!

There are two methods to pay. You can pay by PayPal, which allows you to use your PayPal account or credit card to complete the process. Our system keeps track of the transaction and upon feedback from PayPal informs you that you are all set. It is also possible to pay by bank (wire) transfer, in which case you would transfer the money to the bank account of C&T and route the money with the special message we provide you to end up in this event's pool. Finally, you can always check your registration status (including whether you were marked as roommate for a room) on your registration status page (under My account).

All-in-all, this is the time to register for Drupalcon Szeged! We hope to meet you in the hallways, the socializing spaces and the session rooms at the end of August.