Re: [Debconf-team] Budget status - travel sponsorship
On Sun, Jun 17, 2012 at 10:21 PM, Gunnar Wolf <gwolf@gwolf.org> wrote:
> Moray Allan dijo [Sun, Jun 17, 2012 at 03:42:40PM +0100]:
>> > While I recognize many people see a big failure point our way of
>> > handling travel sponsorship, I sincerely cannot imagine a realistic
>> > way to improve it much. Yes, we have done several improvements over
>> > the years, and I hope to keep making small steps for the better, but
>> > sorry - Answering in what I'd consider to be a nice timeframe is
>> > outside our possibilities.
>>
>> I mostly agree, but in fact this year the travel sponsorship is being
>> allocated from money that we have not (yet) raised this year. So we
>> could just as well have allocated this first batch of travel sponsorship
>> several months ago.
>
> At least two months ago we didn't certainty we'd have enough money to
> cover the conference's expenses, and two weeks ago we didn't know for
> sure on how to allocate room and food sponsorship - which are IMO more
> important to cover than travel sponsorship. So, imperfect as it is, we
> could not have done it much better anyway.
I've been following this thread, since it comes up year after year,
and the only possible way (that I think) we can improve this, is in
the unlikely event we can run enough of a budget surplus that we are
fundraising for future debconfs. IE: We are spending travel
sponsorship money that we raised in previous years. This would allow
us to start working on travel sponsorship as soon as the date and
venue are finalized, at a point in time when booking travel costs are
at the lowest.
I have some thoughts on how this could work on the accounting side,
but the main idea would be to start a separate account for travel
sponsorship, that is kept discrete from conference expenses, and take
it from there. I'm *almost* thinking that travel sponsorship should be
a new Debian Project that is separate from the conference itself, but
understand that this would be problematic in the case that messaging
to potential sponsors could get confusing. To make this work we have
a relatively stable travel sponsorship fund that needs to be replenished
year after year, with most of the variability being in the actual conference
costs.
Please understand that I understand that there is a good chance that
this might not be a realistic undertaking, due to ongoing
uncertainties in fund-raising, and is certainly not a short term
option, but it is the best idea I could come up with.
-Brian
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