Richard Darst dijo [Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 02:19:03PM -0400]: > 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. > (...) Richard, as others have said, thanks again for your excellent work. Not only that, thanks for making it even fun to read, being one of the most potentially tedious and boring parts. And for following so thoroughly every detail (especially given the... "special conditions" under which part of DC11's budget was handled :) ) > (...) > 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). Yes, this seems most right to me. Right now, many people have already bought their tickets, quite probably trusting they will receive accomodation sponsorship - because we have always granted it. So, I'd try at least to cover all of them if possible. Guaranteeing travel sponsorship for everybody who asked (even for everybody who is granted high) is outside of our expectations. And has always been. > 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? No. When we started organizing DC12, we *did* expect it would be cheaper, but we soon (even before the decision to hold it in Nicaragua was made) found it would *not* be cheap by DebConf standards. It's worth noting that the general DebConf budget has significatively shrunk since the original estimates were given — Mainly, because the UCA was chosen instead of the Crowne Plaza Hotel; second, because a sponsorship agreement (50% of the venue price) was reached with UCA, and (hopefully!) third, because we *might* get a good government sponsorship. We should expect every DebConf to operate with a close-to-zero overall budget sum. DC13 should be as close as self-sustainable as possible, as every past DebConf has been (and we expect DC12 to be as well). Thanks again!
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