Re: [Debconf-team] le camp budget...
On 28/10/12 14:54, Richard Darst wrote:
> Hi,
>
> This email is to state my thoughts on the proposed Le Camp
> reservation, more directly. I am looking over this with a critical
> eye, trying to ensure solvency. Thus, I am not relying on faith so
> much here, but provide "global team / debian oversight". It rightly
> seems more critical than other analyzes, but that is the point. I
> expect my criticism to be criticized to produce a new recommendation
> soon.
>
> First off, I went off of a Le Camp budget found in
> debconf-team/dc13/finance/budget_dc13_draft1_lecamp.pdf . I have
> tried to follow list discussions, too.
>
> Since I can't seem to find an editable version of the budget
> spreadsheet in any repo (!), I made my own. This also allowed me to
> play with the numbers, and better separate *required* costs from
> optional ones. I have concentrated on required costs here, lots of
> small expenses aren't important now. Regardless, we can assume at
> least +/- 20 kCHF uncertainty in both incomes and expenses now, it's
> not worth worrying about small things. It is available in svn at
> http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debconf-data/dc13/accounting/budget-darst.ods?view=co
>
>
>
> Here is my summary of the biggest things. In brackets is a comparison
> with the local team budget. I can't check the math of the localteam
> budget, since I don't seem to have the spreadsheet anymore...
>
> Basic:
> DebCamp attendees: 100
> DebConf attendees: 300
> Person-days: 3100
>
> Expenses:
>
> Accommodation 73200 [I can't see how to get as low as the
> spreadsheet while including the minimum cost of exclusive debcamp]
> Food 87700 [My number excludes first/last days, day trip
> day; doesn't reduce other days since le camp is not budging here.]
> Travel sponsorship 0 [See below]
> Other 30000 [Giving up most everything non-essential, this
> could be lowered to half or so.]
>
> Total expenses:190000 [my spreadsheet says more like 245000 for
> everything we want...]
>
>
> Incomes, on an optimistic view:
>
> Sponsors 85000 [Using secure estimates of # b/s/g/p sponsors.
> Their addition said 105000, so I am missing 20 kCHF somewhere]
> [A more liberal estimate put this at 125 kCHF.
> But we should see evidence of much more
> successful fundraising before using this larger
> number in the budget. The figure here is
> already a lot more than was raised in the last
> few years.]
>
> Attendee fees: 22000 [In line with previous years. Local team
> estimates assumes 50% more 50% more profs than the last two years,
> unrealistic number of corps, and fees above what are normally
> charged. #prof has previously been relatively constant, because these
> people are more likely to be be able to attend than those who pay
> themselves and go during holidays; this also overestimates # corp of
> the last few years. We also know that some previous prof/corp
> attendees won't come to Le Camp, so the numbers could be lower than in
> the past.]
> Donations 5000
>
>
> Total incomes: 112000
>
> [A sponsorship figure of +40 kCHF greater, as seen on IRC yesterday,
> includes 40 kCHF of basically "guarantees" "to be repaid once all
> costs are covered (excluding travel sponsorship). However, since this
> is supposed to be repaid, it isn't really "sponsorship", or income, it
> basically helps solve a short-term cash flow problem. I don't include
> it here. If we use that, it means there can be no travel sponsorship]
>
> So, thus far on a rather optimistic view and leaving out anything we
> could possibly do without, this is a minimum *deficit* of 78 kCHF even
> if we skip travel sponsorship etc. That is a lot. With 360
> attendees, deficit goes up by 30kCHF or so.
>
>
>
> Discussion:
>
> - I don't include travel sponsorship above. With the planned 30
> -kCHF. With that, the minimum deficit increases to 108 kCHF.
>
> - (idea 1) There was a proposal to reduce costs by shortening. In
> -order to do that, we can not sign the current contract since it
> -precludes shortening... And Le Camp asserted that this would
> -increase each cost per item.
>
> - (idea 2) Reduce cost by charging attendees for food. This wasn't
> -seen too positively. If attendees eat their own food, we will still
> -have, we will still have to pay le camp [as part of their contract],
> -so at best this still leaves us with cashflow problems. At worst,
> -this becomes a mandatory 40 CHF/day registration fee.
>
> - (idea 3) Bed upselling / reducing accom cost. Bed upselling is part
> of already there as a separate income. Local team had assumed 6.5
> kCHF. Historically, this has been part of "professional". We don't
> know how popular this would be.
>
> - (idea 4) Reduce accom cost. (?)
>
> - "Bar profit": previous pdf assumes 5 kCHF. Not sure what the basis
> for that is...
>
> - This is using the cheaper lunch option [cold buffet, every day],
> saving 15 kCHF or so.
>
> - With my calculations, reducing to 50 DebCamp attendees and 150
> DebConf attendees (but somehow keeping the same number prof/corp
> attendees) about balances thisgs (5 kCHF surplus). This means, with
> optimistic fundraising, we can provide sufficient travel sponsorship.
> However, people have hoped that this would be a big DebConf.
>
> - If we have on the order of 200 professional attendees (conf+camp
> prof attendee counts as two), that would also get the budget very
> close to balanced. Remember: this assumes a professional fee greater
> more than the standard raw cost per attendee-week, and quite a bit
> more than the past two years.
>
> - Even assuming 125000 sponsorship income (optimistic estimate) leaves
> us with a major deficit when included travel sponsorship.
>
>
>
> To Do / Recommendation:
>
> I have put this budget spreadsheet in svn. I encourage peer review
> and people to send me updates. People can look it over and correct
> any assumptions I have made, and I will re-issue and updated one, with
> updated discussion.
>
> We don't have to sign the Le Camp contract for ~ 4 weeks, according to
> latest IRC estimates. This gives us time to see how well the
> fundraising estimates work out. If it goes much better than normal
> and we find a lot of first-time sponsors, we can see again.
> Otherwise, we need to find another plan.
That is not so clear - it has been asserted that a `verbal' agreement
with Le Camp may already be binding and that the deadline for a signed
contract is 29 October. Luca was quite concerned about the implications
of this on Friday. It would be good to have confirmation that all
potential venues recognise that nothing is agreed yet and that this is
the timescale for a decision to be made without penalty.
> I don't see room for travel sponsorship as-is now. "anonymous 40
> kCHF" money would go to filling budget deficit, any additional
> sponsorship would offset that but not contribute to travel sponsorship
> (since anonymous money is decreased). It would take more than 108
> kCHF extra fundraising to provide 30 kCHF travel sponsorship.
>
> My recommendation basically goes with what I said in
> [🔎] 20121022132047.GT513@pyke.zgib.net -- I firmly recommend *not* to sign
> the contract yet. A contract at this point would remove our usual
> ability to cut significant costs later, so DebConf13 would generate a
> hard deficit, as opposed to a soft one in past years that we solved by
> aggressive cost cutting close to the conference. Sort of like we had
> thought earlier in the year, I think we shouldn't sign a contract
> until we agree on how to fund it... and we can't definitely say we are
> there yet.
>
>
Not just a hard deficit, but a hard landing: it is still `all or
nothing', or in other words `betting the house' on one big inflexible
contract.
`hard landing' means if we don't fully pay 100% of the cash to Le Camp
on time, then everyone will be left waiting outside the gates with
nowhere to sleep, no food, no meeting venue. For Interlaken, there is a
risk that people will have to feed themselves, but at least they would
almost definitely have somewhere to sleep.
It is this type of risk analysis that led to the creation of the
VenueComparison wiki:
http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf13/VenueComparison
and I believe we should still continue to use that to itemize critical
differences in the risk profile of the two proposals (as the budgets for
Le Camp and Interlaken are pretty much the same).
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