Re: [Debconf-team] Investigating the Debian involvement in DebConf12
Hi,
First off, this is what budget talk makes me think of:
http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3po7s5/
On Thu, Jun 07, 2012 at 09:37:07PM +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 06, 2012 at 04:58:10PM +0200, Luca Capello wrote:
> > The current budget is prone to change given the recent announcement
> > about the involvement of the Nicaraguan government [1]. We will have a
> > more precise idea of the budget on Friday 8th (I will contact you again
> > with the detailed budget), so this is in no way an official request yet.
> >
> > [1] <http://lists.debconf.org/lurker/message/20120602.185904.8e8f5a7b.en.html>
> >
> > Nevertheless, the deadline for reconfirmation is planned for June 15th
> > and we would like to grant travel sponsorship requests before that date.
> > There are currently 36 requests for a total of 34'357.00 USD (out of
> > total costs of 53'120.93 USD). If we sort the request from the lowers
> > to the highers, with 15'000 USD we could fulfill the first 25 requests,
> > while with 25'000 USD we could reach 33 participants, almost all.
> >
> > What is the official Debian position?
> Now, the problem with *this* specific DebConf cycle is that it's the
> first one and the implementation is not yet complete. In particular, I
> haven't seen any "preliminary" budget and we're less than one month away
> from the conference :-) It's no big deal, just repeating the above to
> ensure we're all on the same page.
Just so everyone know what it's like, let me describe organizing a
DebConf. It's like skiing down a mountain. Except you have no skis,
and it's really steep, so you are basically in a controlled fall. You
can't really stop yourself to get your bearings, and all you can do is
make sure you don't crash. With that being said, I think the team
does a great job, considering we are giving free stuff to most people,
fixed income (registration fees) are such a tiny part of our budget
and that since most people are sponsored, you can't really exactly
figure out how many people are coming until relatively late.
I don't think the implementation is incomplete, it's just things are
much more complicated than it seems. I'm not sure it'll ever get as
perfect as you desire, though one constant problem is communicating
things enough (which I try to do help below).
> As a consequence of the above, however, I lack data to answer your
> inquiry. In particular, I've no idea of whether the money you lack are
> missing starting from an empty budget, or if they are missing starting
> from last year surplus, and in that case whether it was both the USD and
> EUR surplus or only one of them, etc. You see the problem. To solve it,
> do you have a budget to show me so that I could get an idea of how much
> money has been collected, how it's been spent, etc?
As for DC11 surplus, as I just calculated, it is around 20 kEUR. I
recall DC9 and DC10 together balancing each other out.
I have (unfortunately for my productivity) started looking at
registration data and budget, to advise those teams and to be able to
answer this question. I can tell you that DC12 team has been keeping
a budget (alas, public/private isn't separated out to be able to link
to it).
66 kUSD sponsorship
16 kUSD registration fees/donations
30 kUSD fixed costs (venue, etc)
15 kUSD food
42 kUSD accommodation
It looks like right now, we are missing about 8500USD to be able to
pay for all sponsored accommodations. Yes, it doesn't add up with
respect to what is above. Really, knowing numbers to within +/- 5000
kUSD is pushing it.
We are still waiting to know for sure how much the government will
contribute, which could drastically affect things more than everything
else combined (instant surplus).
Here are examples of the flux we are in: Reconfirmation isn't until a
few days from now, that will probably decrease the number of sponsored
accom a bit. We have a lot of people who are requesting accom from
ambiguous categories, which might mean they'll pay us some extra
money, but also need to pay for a room. They might not take accom, or
they might need to be sponsored...
However, historically speaking, our position will probably be slightly
better once all of that settles.
And there are *many* other expenses that can't accurately be predicted
until later. However, the team generally overestimates, and then
spends more frugally whenever we can.
> We do have money reserves, but we've also recently started a fairly
> expensive yearly hw replacement plan, so it's my duty to figure out how
> to solve "blanket's too short" issues. To decide one way or another, I
> first need to understand why money's are missing.
>
> If, OTOH, you only need a "bank" that guarantees money for sponsorship
> exist as a last resort, that has been promised in the past and can be
> arranged. But it need to be backed by a reasonable certainty that
A "bank" is helpful to us, so that we can guarantee sponsored
accommodation now, and then reduce the amount of our budget later when
reconfirmation happens. This is *extremely* helpful. In some past
years (maybe dc10 or dc11? I forget exactly), I think we haven't used
the bank when it was offered.
> sponsorship (or economies) to cover them exist. (But even in that case
> --- and that, according to the minutes, is a point that has been raised
> in your last meeting --- I don't think that giving travel sponsorship to
> everybody who have *asked* for it is a goal. We have seen in the past
> people trying to surf debconf travel sponsorship in spite of their very
> low Debian involvement, and I guess there are some this year too. Have
> them already been excluded from the above figures or not?)
My personal recommendation would be to at least guarantee funding for
sponsored accom (with the team pruning people anywhere possible).
Most likely, this won't be needed.
Guaranteeing travel sponsorship is another matter. However, if we
don't have travel sponsorship soon, prices will increase too much so
that some people can't even come at all (side effect: accom/food costs
decrease, surplus increases, we now have the surplus to pay for some
more travel but it's too late, and so on).
I remember hearing that DC12 was supposed to be cheap/have more of a
surplus because DC13 was supposed to be more expensive. -team: Is
this still the general thought?
In summary, budget is *always* bad at this point. Having a Debian
bank lets us not pull our hair out, and not have to cut people early
and instead use natural cuts after reconfirmation. I think the team
is always conscious of money issues and constantly trying to reduce
expenses, and won't willingly use debian money just because it's
there.
- Richard
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