Re: [Debconf-team] Day trip decision
On 23/07/13 at 12:20 +0200, Philipp Hug wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Now, as a matter of full honesty; by looking at the detailed budget
> > source, I see that the amounts were as follows: 50 CHF / person for
> > DayTrip, 30 CHF / person for Conference Dinner; both multiplied by 348
> > unique attendees.
>
>
> That's correct, we calculated with CHF 50 /p.P for the daytrip which
> results in the 17400 for the 348 persons in the budget.
> Don't forget that this amount also includes eating out on lunch, which we'd
> also pay CHF10-15 (depending on food option) per person if we'd stay at
> LeCamp.
>
> We do have an approved budget of 17400 and the money is available, so I
> don't see any need to discuss this again. That's one of the reasons for a
> budget, to be able to delegate work to different people and not
> micro-manage them.
>
> Looking at the numbers from [1] the boat trip with dinner is the really
> expensive part.
> So if we do the conference dinner on another day and only look at the
> daytrip budget it looks a lot better:
> Total amount including lunch paid to LeCamp: around CHF 14k (+transport, as
> we don't use the boat) which is below the 17k in the budget and if some
> attendees won't eat dinner on this day and mark it in penta, we'll save
> even more. (It would then even fit in CHF50 p.p)
>
> [1] https://debconf13.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf13/DayTrip
>
> My suggestion, if Raphael agrees, is to go ahead with Daytrip organization
> as planned within our budget and organize conference dinner separate from
> day trip.
Hi,
I understand that spending a lot of money on the daytrip (and the
conference dinner) might look like bad use of Debian money. However,
I think that generally, people agree that the daytrip is important
because:
- DebConf is a very tiring and stressful event. Spending a day outside
of hacklabs and talk rooms, focusing, thinking and talking about
non-Debian-stuff, significantly improves our ability to
focus, and our productivity, during the following days.
- the daytrip is a very nice opportunity to meet people outside your
usual group of Debian friends, which is extremely healthy for the
project.
- the daytrip is a good opportunity to discover the local country. It's
quite easy to end up not going out of the DebConf venue for the whole
week. :)
I think that the proposed Day Trip activities are really great and will
very much contribute to reaching those goals.
Now, there's the question of the conference dinner. If the conference
dinner is just a "longer dinner at the usual place with some marginally
improved food", I think it misses the point, and most attendees will
just want to go back to hacklabs. Also, we shouldn't have a conference
dinner just because most conferences have a conference dinner: DebConf
is quite special, we had DebConfs without conference dinners before
(e.g. DC10) and it was OK.
A conference dinner during a boat trip looks great, and something that
attendees will remember, but it also looks quite expensive, even if we
can afford it thanks to the fantastic work of the sponsorship team. I
was wondering if some compromise solutions were possible, such as
keeping the boat trip, but having a less expensive standing "cocktail"
while on the boat, with self-served food? Or just a less expensive menu?
Lucas
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