I have (More on the Financial Auditing and Web Development side), albeit one not generally related to Technology (Anime Convention) It's possible to accomplish

I have (More on the Financial Auditing and Web Development side), albeit one not generally related to Technology (Anime Convention) It's possible to accomplish without significant funding in advance, but you'll either need to have connections or need to think smart. If there's a local University nearby you might be able to get a student organization to book you some rooms for free if your conference aligns with some interests. Some community centers might give you a similar deal. That takes care of the venue[0]. A nearby public park system may also have Shelters or small buildings to rent on the cheap (<$500) but you're less likely to have amenities like Wi-Fi power outlets, and Air Conditioning. It may also not have nearby restaurants if it's out in the sticks. If your guests all have cars and smart phones that's fine and dandy, but some demographics don't. Consider who you're targeting when picking a venue. If you're doing this without advance funding, you had better have a very small event where you can do everything yourself, or volunteers. If you aren't paying volunteers you had better have some good non-monetary incentives for them [1]. I wouldn't organize this kind of thing from scratch for the profit. Conventions can be profitable, but unless you really hit it out of the park it's not something you can reliably live off of. For perspective the convention I helped organize sees >3000 paid guests annually and gets over 130 paid vendors. Not particularly large, but not really small either[2]. I can tell you now that even with freebies from the university and sponsors we couldn't pay one organizer a livable wage, let alone a team. Part of that is because we don't really milk our guests and we've reached a market cap for are area, but even if we doubled our prices I still don't think we could pay one livable salary reliably. [0] Depending on the university, you may not be able to charge an entrance fee for rooms obtained in this way. [1] I suspect this only works for the convention I helped organize because not even the lead organizer gets a dime of payment. Volunteers arguably get better rewards then the "staff" do, because once they've worked a few hours, they get free admission whereas the "staff" are just always working during the event. [2] Big enough to worry about the fire code and get local newspaper and TV coverage, but not big enough to be considered Wikipedia notable. (Ironically shortly after a Wikipedian accused us of being in bed with local media outlets, our Marketing Director was made a admin of a local newspaper's website. A broken clock is right twice a day.)