Thanks for the heads up, Dean. Looking forward to it!

Wow. Never been, and now never going to.
Between travel costs and registration, that would now sink my PD budget for the entire year.

Totally understand. The size, scale, content and community at JNUC more than justifies a fee. I'll look forward to seeing everyone this year!

Oh no!

I'll probably have more thoughts on this later..

On one hand, any change is hard to accept. While this would probably put it on par with the rest of the Apple admin community conferences in terms of face value price, it is unfortunate to see the impact on the EDU field, especially as many have already set their budgets for the next year.

On the other hand, something like Microsoft Ignite is $2200 plus room and transportation. If the content of JNUC begins to evolve, include more technical sessions, labs, certification classes, more speakers, it's hard for the price to remain the same.

Regrettably, the timing on this change may mean a lot of JAMF customers in education may not be able to attend JNUC 2016 now. A number of budgets may have included the assumption that going to JNUC 2016 cost $0 (plus travel costs), like in previous years. Those prospective attendees may not be able to include in those budgets the extra costs now associated with purchasing a conference ticket. Even the ones that can may wind up paying a higher ticket cost because of the lengthly approval process that many educational institutions have to deal with.

Would it be possible to offer different rates, depending on assumed budget limits? PyCon has a model for this which has worked well for them:

https://us.pycon.org/2016/registration/

In my current situation, I simply cannot afford this. I've had to self fund every JNUC i've been to.

Flights vary around the $600 for me alone. Hotel, even if I AirBnB things again that's another $200. Food, travel and this. That's a lot of money just to get there and around. Just not financially viable for me for the foreseeable future.

I agree with @rtrouton. This could have a huge impact on Edu participants. When the cost of the conference was zero (or close to zero), it wasn't hard to justify the cost of a flight and hotel room. Now, we have to add at the minimum $500 to this overall cost and it could be difficult to justify. And I work for a prestigious independent school with an actual budget for PD and conferences. I know many of my public school colleagues are going to have a very hard time reconciling the increase in cost.

But, nor should JAMF have to pick up the entire cost of the conference. I've been quite surprised for years that it remained free but always assumed that the higher-than-average licensing cost for Casper allowed for JAMF to put on a conference for its customers.

I'd like to see a kind of financial aid process that would account for different budget levels. I probably wouldn't use or quality for any financial aid myself, but I worry about attending a conference where the audience has been pared to only orgs that can afford to attend.

Regrettable, but still sounds like a fantastic bargain compared to other such conferences. Does mean that I'll likely have to chose between JNUC and the PSU MacAdmins conference, doubt I can get approval for both, but completely understandable in my opinion.

@deanhager, thanks for the update on JNUC 2016!
Honestly, I'm surprised JAMF was able to keep the JNUC free for as long as you guys did. It can't be cheap to host something the size of the conference as its been, at least within the last 2 years as it grew quite substantially.

On the other hand, its a little unfortunate it needed to jump to $500+. Going from $0 to $500 comes across as a little bit of a steep jump, even though in reality its still pretty reasonable when compared to other conferences. I think however, had it gone to $300 or $400 for this year, then went up a little each year, it might have been more palatable in the long run. The "free" aspect was always a selling point when I had put in the request to attend with my employer - basically an immediate approval since they knew the cost would only be airfare, hotel and some food expenses. I'm not certain where this will land things for some folks now, including myself, so it will be interesting to see.

Still, JNUC's a fantastic week, there's little arguing that. Assuming I don't have other commitments again this year during that timeframe that prevent me from going, I'm going to try to register to attend.

While I fully respect the decision to begin charging, I find the timing to be very troublesome. This change, and the timing of it, will make it very difficult for much of your core target audience to be able to attend, myself included. Like @damienbarrett, I fear what the conference will become after alienating so many.

I must echo the Education folks as most of us budget a year in advance and are lucky to get those funds encumbered by January of the next year. That said, $500-600 per person is a rather difficult fee to eat up, especially when your budget is tight as is and your wallet holder is extremely fiscally responsible.

That said, one of two things will probably happen with regards to my organization - My co-administrator would not be able to attend and I am the only one to attend since the budget was pre-approved without the registration fee. The other (although highly unlikely) would be that my wallet holder consumes too many alcoholic beverages and shockingly agrees to pay the registration costs while still allowing my co-administrator to attend. I am more than likely seeing option #1 to be more realistic.

I am hoping that there is some sort of a follow-up to this for Education folks, though highly unlikely.

Well @deanhager, just like most of the other members of JAMF Nation who work in education, I'm sad to say that I will more than likely not be able to attend this year due to the attendance fee. This announcement was made really too close to budget deadlines (our FY16-17 budget is already submitted) and trying to find another $500 in our training budget is probably not going to happen.

While I understand the need for the fee (JNUC has grown and needs more room/infrastructure), I wish that this announcement was made earlier so education could plan for it accordingly. I'm currently writing an email my Executive Director to notify him of this change and hope that something can be done.

I do understand why the charge I do expect it will not be as crowded this year. While I was able to justify the expense before it will be a lot harder now. Not sure I will be making it this year.

Hmm. It never occurred to me how this would affect EDU customers, since I'm not in that sector, but have to agree. With already constrained budgets, its likely the EDU conference attendee numbers will drop precipitously. That's very unfortunate. One of the great things about JNUC has always been its ability to draw in Casper users from all areas, not just large enterprise customers, and even people globally due to the free cost in the past. And heck, I've even met a few potential Casper Suite customers, as in, not yet users, but hoping to find out more before making the jump. The new attendee fee will probably keep potential customers away since its not likely many will be able to justify spending the extra money just to see if its the right solution for them.
I guess what I'm saying is, this could actually affect pulling in future JAMF customers. Impossible to know for sure of course, but its a possibility.

I actually attended the JNUC in 2010 as a non-customer (I was only exposed to Composer at the time). Ultimately, the university I was at didn't buy in, but it was a very interesting tool for sure and one that I pushed harder for because I was able to see what it could offer. Had the conference cost money I definitely wouldn't have gone so there may be an effect on potential customers. A shame the timing on this announcement will effect customers. I guess those are just the growing pains of changes though.

It's likely I've been to my last JNUC with this announcement. Even if budgeted which it won't be, just the manner in which our district handles PO's. It could start the process in this date range, and not get approved until another date range. Typically my cost was less then the third tier registration, which then doubles my cost now.

Guess my next question is..is how much are my seats going to cost me now at renewal time.

@deanhager Thanks for the post! Will organizations participating in the Training Pass be offered any sort of incentive or discount for JNUC 2016?

Bummer... Can I still show up for the Bottle Share?

I understand the need to expand however this is unfortunate to hear. I would have to echo what other edu customers have been saying, going to JNUC was always an easy sell because it was free in the past. @mahughe your question about seat costs also came to mind especially when you are talking about 10,000+ licenses.

Little steep for K-12's. Used to be an easy sell to administration 'FREE', now, not so much.

I echo many of the statements about how surprising it is that JNUC has been free for so long. My only complaint is, even if I was able to get approval to attend this year, I could get the approval through our system/processes in 30 days.

I really wish JAMF would extend the timeline for early registration so the $499 price was at least 45-60 days out.

Will the sessions still be recorded and posted online later, like in past years? Or will there be a fee to get access to them?

I echo many of the other EDU customers. I wouldn't even be able to get this approved until after July 1. This means I wouldn't be able to get the early pricing, even though I plan on attending this year. I hope we can extend that pricing a little more.

@brockma9 JAMF will of course need to respond, but I highly doubt there would be a fee to see the sessions online later. That would kind of be adding salt into a wound to do that. As has already been posted by @deanhager JAMF isn't looking to reap profits from this, just cover their costs so they can devote more of it to actual development in the product, which basically all of us have been clamoring for the last several years. And it sounds like we will be getting a good dose of this year!

Just wanted to say though, I'm with @mconners on the shortness of the early registration being problematic. Had JAMF been charging all along for JNUC and most of us already had a recurring line item in the budget to attend the conference, it probably wouldn't be too much an issue, but dropping this on us and expecting people to scramble to meet the early reg deadline in the next 30 days to get the lower cost seems a bit unfair. I can foresee scenarios where customers attempt to push this through, but due to the inherent slowness of budget bureaucracies and approvals, just slightly miss the deadline and the price jumps $100, making it less likely to get approved.
I can understand JAMF's need to have early registration fees in so they can determine how much they can spend on the conference, but I hope that JAMF will make a surprise announcement that they will be extending the early registration to end of May or beginning of June, so another few weeks to a month.