Do you really want to come to The Feast but having a hard timing convincing your company or your boss to fork over the dinero?  Chances are your boss doesn’t understand just how meaningful and important The Feast is going to be and thinks your time is better spent at work.  Today’s your lucky day (well almost)!  We’ve put together a cheat sheet for talking through the typical concerns:

Cost: It’s too expensive!
The Feast represents a bottom-up movement, so we’re doing something a little different — we ask those who can afford to pay higher prices to micro-sponsor The Feast, which allows us to offer tickets to our Feast Fellows.  You’re not only paying for the conference but supporting a movement.

Short Staffed: How will all of the work get done?
Option #1: What if you framed the issue a little differently to lesson the significance of your lack of physical presence and instead played up the fact that you will be so wildly inspired from The Feast that you will be coming back wildly inspired and energized and renewed?   Attending The Feast will be an investment, not an expense for your company.

Option #2:  Convince your boss to give you a “service day” for the year. Much like vacation or sick day, you can ask for a service day.  If that doesn’t work, convert one of your sick days of the year to a service day, and apply to be a Feast Fellow (if they won’t cover the cost of a regular ticket).

Relevancy: What’s in it for us?
The thing about the intersection of creativity, business and social responsibility is that it’s applicable to all sectors.  It’s becoming more and more clear that the waves of conscious consumerism, social responsibility and environmental sustainability are only gaining momentum.  At The Feast, we’re having a full line-up of cross-disciplinary speakers that can provide key insights and teachings regarding challenges, successes and best practices. In addition to gaining knowledge, you will also have the opportunity to meet and network with hundreds of incredible people who are dedicated, passionate and brilliant innovators.

Offer to prepare a report based on what you learned from The Feast to share with your team.  It can even be similar to the presentation that we gave titled “Innovating Industries: Ten Things You Can Learn from Social Innovation“

Conference Overload:  Why is this conference the conference to attend?
The Feast is unlike any other conference that has been done before.  While we have been inspired by the best elements from other conferences such as TED, Pop!Tech and SXSW, The Feast is truly a unique experience.  Day one will be filled with a lineup of incredibly diverse and dynamic speakers ranging from professional poker players to farmers to musicians to educators and more,  Day two will be an opportunity to attend other events such as The Kitchen and Feast Workshops.  Also, All Day Buffet is the company that puts on The Feast, and we’ve been known as The Scarlet Pimpernel leading this social innovation movement in NYC.

I’ve never heard of The Feast.  Who’s written about it?
Take your pick from the following articles, and send them to your boss, or send all of them!

1. GOOD Magazine: Diary of a Social Venture Start-up: Building Your Team
2. PSFK:  The Feast NOLA: The Connected Age Emerges from New Orleans
3. Swiss Miss: Notes from The Feast Conference
4. Echoing Green:  Satiated by The Feast Social Innovation Conference
5. Unreasonable Institute: Interview with Michael Karnjanaprakorn
6. Flavorpill: All Day Buffet presents The Feast
7. Causecast: The Feast Conference Q&A with Michael Karnjanaprakorn
8. Change.org:  Feast on Good Interview with Jerri Chou
   
9. Josh Spear: The Feast Conference
10. Idealist: Winning Poker Games and Sustainable Food Systems
11. Swiss Miss: The Feast Conference
12. NetSquared: The Feast Conference
13. Burstoid: The Feast Conference
14. SocialEdge: Feast Conference
15. All Day Buffet: Why Did We Choose These Speakers for The Feast?

Who attends The Feast?
There’ll be close to 375 attendees at The Feast Conference this year ranging from nonprofit leaders to tech entrepreneurs to industrial designers. Some of our featured guests include speakers such as Grammy-nominated musician Kenna and professional poker player Annie Duke.

In order to stick with our cross-disciplinary and diverse theme, we have guests coming from places such as Thailand, Rwanda and Denmark to San Francisco, New Orleans and Connecticut. Some of the guests include social entrepreneurs such as Daniela Papi, who runs a hybrid business in Cambodia (PEPY), to advertising executives from Naked Communications.

Leave any other tips and tricks in the comments below and we hope to see you at The Feast next week!