You should tell this to HelloWorld, a dude in another thread who told me that if he had 4 mil in BTC, he wouldn't cash them out because he would hope they would grow to a value of 40 mil
What about a radio competition? Radio stations are always giving away stuff that is basically put up by advertisers... what if a radio did some little competition where the prize giveaway was $1000 worth of bitcoins for example.
That might help get around the requirement for whoever's putting up the Bitcoins to have a lottery/promotion/competition permit.
I'd suggest a number of smaller prizes though, so that people have more chances to win something and will tune in for that reason alone - if you spread it out over 5 or 10 days, you have more opportunities to influence them into attending the expo.
If someone's willing to front the cost of holding the event at Crown Casino, then you can keep the admission prices reasonable but if the event needs to be funded from what you can recoup from admission prices and trade booths then hiring space at one of the Melbourne universities might be more viable financially (or if you decide to go with a convention/expo split then you could hold the nerdy bit at the uni one day and go for the wow factor at Crown on another day).
