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Re: [Debconf-team] Budget found in the back of a taxi



On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 05:32, Richard Darst <rkd@zgib.net> wrote:
> Here's a summary as I see it, including only critical things we will
> have to pay:
>  http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf10/Budget
> Don't rely on it for anything more than a very general picture.

So by my count, that adds up to:

    Fixed:
       Expenses: -7,390   (are venue costs free or in housing?)
       Sponsorship: 49,500
       Surplus: 42,110

    Attendees:
       Accom/Food: -182,447
       Travel: -54,011 (not all will be accepted obviously)
       Rego: 44,865
       Deficit: -191,593

    Assets:
       DebConf9 Surplus: 70,000
       SPI Debian earmark: 36,000 [0]
       Total: 106,000

By my count, that comes to a total of:

   Assets: 106,000
   Fixed income: 42,110
   Attendee subsidy: -191,593
   Total loss: -43,483

which would mean saying no to about 80% of the travel requests _and_
using up all the money SPI holds on Debian's behalf, which probably
isn't exactly a good thing...

(It also seems to miss costs for t-shirts, printed proceedings, and
miscellaneous conferencey things like name badges, spare powerstrips
and such)

The biggest imbalance seems to be the per-attendee income/expenses.
Maybe it's worth spending some time trying to improve that. Some
questions that come to mind for me are:

   - I'm currently down for sponsored food+accom. If I say no to
sponsored food, is that going to be awkward if I want to chat with
people over lunch/dinner, who have said yes to sponsored food?
(Personally, I enjoyed eating around the place more than the sponsored
food when I tried it in Mexico and Edinburgh; but you go to these
things to talk to people, not for the food)

   - does the $650 rego cost cover the food/accom costs for the week
for that individual, or is that still subsidised? It looked to me like
it only covered accom, not food too, but maybe I missed something.

   - have you considered offering a rego fee level around $100~$200,
for students and people from poorer countries? It won't cover how much
they cost for the conference (especially if they get travel
sponsorship), but it's surely better than $0.

   - what proportion of attendees are at the various levels (travel
support, food subsidy, accom subsidy; debcamp; free rego, $650 rego,
$1300 rego)? How many people are currently registered?

   - The Linux Foundation has a travel fund [1] designed to help
people attend developer conferences like DebConf; I don't know if
anyone's made use of it to attend DebConf before, but it might be able
to help with some of the cross-continent flights, particularly for
anyone also attending LinuxCon the week after in Boston...

Cheers,
aj

[0] http://www.spi-inc.org/secretary/agenda/2010/2010-04-14.html
     (I'm presuming the dc9 surplus is still in europe somewhere, so
counting SPI's funds isn't
      double counting)

[1] http://www.linuxfoundation.org/programs/developer/travel/request

-- 
Anthony Towns <aj@erisian.com.au>

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