On 2012-10-25 01:39, Gunnar Wolf wrote:
Right. Emergency mode rarely makes us take the bestdecisions. However, in order to get the number closer in line with theforseen numbers, we can assume no travel sponsorship will bepaid. That will mean we have to budget for IIRC CHF30K less - And ~15%of our current budget is no small feat.
Just so that the other side of the argument is made:Travel sponsorship is important to make DebConf as useful as possible an event for Debian. Allocating only 10-15% of the budget might allow us to bring a lot of useful people who couldn't otherwise attend. It seems likely that we either won't raise anywhere near enough money, in which case we're in a bad position anyway (and 10% more being required won't make it much worse), or that we'll raise enough money from magic Swiss sources and this 10% won't be a problem.
If by a pertinent point (say,February or March) we have clear indication we will meet the ~170K, wecan start the travel sponsorship process.
"It is only October" seems a valid point here, whatever is decided about the argument above. I'm not sure we would want to open for sponsorship requests yet even if we had the money in the bank?
-- Moray