[Debconf-team] DebConf13 decision meeting: past and present
Hi everybody,
Some months ago I was in the bid decision meeting and I voted to have DebConf
in Switzerland. It was not an easy decision, both bids were quite close
and both have problems. In the meeting, there wasn't the possibility of
not choosing any bid, something that now looking back should have been a
valid outcome.
At voting time, my heart was more excited about the idea of visiting Latvia,
still I tried to choose rationally and I casted my vote for the swiss team.
And not for the swiss bid as exactly presented as some people seem to think.
I found that the swiss team was larger and seemed more motivated to work
on improving the bid. For organizing DebConf, we need a local team who
can work closely with the venue, sharing the stress and the workload
on site in the last months while still keeping their personal life and
the Latvian bid looked like a one-man bid.
Back to the meeting, the swiss local team have started negotiations with
a venue and they have built a vision upon that venue. There was nothing
still 100% sure although they were very excited about their vision.
Their bid was presented with some plans B you still can find in the wiki,
which I understood as there is nothing closed yet with going to the
presented venue. And also, the bid was presented with some assumptions that
later have not worked as expected. I was expecting the team (local and global)
working in getting the bid better, not worse as it has became in the last
months.
Let me comment on some of this problems:
* accommodation and camping.
Back at the decision meeting:
If you read the bid decision meeting [1], camping in 'le camp' didn't seem
to be a problem. The venue still provided normal accommodation that wasn't
fancy but quite decent with the biggest inconvenient being having a lot of
big rooms. Le camp still have some smaller rooms but most of the people
would have to go bigger rooms (see list of rooms and sizes at [2]). With
some of the people camping, we wouldn't have to use in full the bigger rooms
so things could end more or less equilibrated.
Le camp is isolated from somewhere else, going to a hotel isn't a possibility
unless you also have a car and are willing to drive at least 20m in the morning.
This makes the option of staying externally quite costly, so having at least
the camping option made me think the accommodation wouldn't be a big issue.
What is the situation now:
We can't camp. It is explicitly stated in the "conditions générales" [3]
of le camp that camping is forbidden. Any override of this conditions must
be clearly specified in the contract, which isn't the case at this moment.
People wanting to go to DebConf are forced to sleep in le camp in the dorms.
The alternative is car+hotel that is quite expensive even for swiss prices
given you don't have a lot of hotels to choose from around. I did a quick search
and if DebConf were in Geneva, people staying in a hotel would have only half
of the costs.
The problem with the big rooms and having all the people together in le camp
is the total lack of privacy: people attending DebConf will be surrounded by
people 24/7 which is very tiring emotionally for a lot of people. For kids,
this is something natural and they tend to enjoy it, but it can affect negatively
adult people who might end not having a fun and productive DebConf.
* possibility of external catering
Decision meeting:
It was said we could hire an external catering and thus lower the food prices.
The situation now:
While le camp offers their installations with or without food provided, we are
forced to buy the food from them. The reason to this is they have offered us
some kind of forfeit that allows to have le camp only for us (dorms, talks and
bof rooms,etc) if we get food from them and we pay a minimum of X people per day.
I don't remember the number of people but it is CHF 4880 /day which results
in 230 persons, if you calculate with an average bed price of CHF 21. This also
includes DebCamp that is always less populated than DebCamp, so if the whole week
of DebCamp we have 80 people, we need to have a lot of more people than 230
during DebConf to compensate. In a perfect DebCamp with 80 people 6 nights and
a DebConf with 300 people every day for 7 days, we have:
>>> (80*6+300*7)/13.0
198.46153846153845
we wouldn't reach the threshold. If you look at the numbers of people attending
in previous years [4], this still looks like a high threshold. Think not everybody
attends every day, so if DebConf12 had 187 attendees, it doesn't mean there were
187 people every day, rather 187 people spend at least one day.
This forfeit is the kind of things are a good idea when presented but end
being a trap. It doesn't give us any of the flexibility that saved our budget
in previous years. The emails from Richard Darst are very illustrative in this point.
* team starting to raise money very early
Decision meeting:
The team was aware of the costly DebConf and they would start raising money very early.
Like from after ending DebConf12.
The situation now:
The team started 2-3 weeks ago. Why? Because the real problem here is the local team
wants to do everything lineally and in some order they have thought, and DebConf doesn't
work in this way. This is probably my biggest critic to the current local team.
There are some strong dependences in DebConf organization, e.g. dates are
*usually* not announced until venue (as in place to have talks and sleep) is closed.
But things are never fully closed until a couple of months before the conference itself
and some change 2 and 3 times. That gives us a lot of flexibility every year.
As examples, a few years we have changed venues, dorms and in some cases, we didn't have
a food plan until a couple of weeks before the conference. The local team wanted to avoid
all this, but it has been shown every year, you can not avoid it because you can not control
all the factors. The local team back at DebConf 8 thought they had the venue closed for months
and the venue quit 2-3 months before the conference. They ended finding a better and
cheaper venue. I still remember when Tincho (local team then) said: "You can not delay
a DebConf until it's ready" This is one of the reason why it is asked to future localteams
to get involved ready, to learn how to live in this chaos ;)
Thanks for reading this far,
Ana
[1] bid decision meeting http://meetbot.debian.net/debconf-team/2012/debconf-team.2012-02-20-19.03.log.html
[2] http://lists.debconf.org/lurker/message/20121030.194801.f5d584a1.en.html
[3] http://www.lecamp.ch/pdf/conditions.pdf
[4] http://lists.debconf.org/lurker/message/20121106.005241.300e527b.en.html
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