[Debconf-team] budget woes
with some effords i got the responsible person at netapp on the
phone yesterday. we were both shocked and bewildered when we
noticed that due to a miscommunication they intended to pay 5kUS
and not 45kUS as we expected. He will now sponsor us with 10k,
and it i belive him that that hurts him as much as us.
on the bright side gandi (the french internet registry, which
wants to intensivy its relations to debian) will give us 10kE,
and both mysql and univention will give us 0,5kE each.
with that we are ~12kUS in the red, currently. bummer. That
includes already the (still unconfirmed) sponsorship from
Linspire, VALinux and Xandros. This is with still very optimistic
cost assumptions on the local side where costs are not in the
budget yet. (the local team works to put them in, though.)
Outstanding sponsorship requests are those to Siemens, Skype and
Montavista and the spanish regional governments, all with very
slimm hope of success.
That means that we need to find a way to save money.
We can for example limit the number of sponsored accommodation
and meals to 200, or not pay the breakfast, reapproach the people
with flight-sponsorship to reconsider and paying more (or all)
themselfs or skip the day trip (saves only ~5k).
These options all hurt. what do you think? i guess we have to
pick one or more of them, anyway.
Even though the situation is grave, it is not hopeless. We dont
need a conf with free food or travel, really. It is very
unfortunate that we promised it already but we cant attempt to
pay for something that we cant afford. It is more important to
have a lesser debconf now then a full-service event this year and
non at all next year. The goal must be to find an as fair
solution as possible for everyone coming.
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