Dear Brian and Aigars, and others, thanks again for your time. Our responses follow inline: > I'd say that to make the job of those reviewing the bids easier, > it probably makes sense to wait to review the bids until you have > these results, and your team can settle on a preferred venue that > is unlikely to change after the decision. Aigars also explicitly proposed to consider our two locations as separate bids in his follow-up email. We ask you kindly not to split our bid in two. When we formed this team, we agreed to be the German team and not to tie us down to a particular venue until we had to. Our motivation is not that we wouldn't be able to deliver in time for this decision — on the contrary, we developed two locations in parallel and have come a long way with both already. Our motivation was rather — and continues to be — to host the best possible DebConf15 in Germany, and having options to choose from (multiple offers) while being able to make commitments (i.e. knowing that DC15 will be in Germany) means that we can negotiate properly, get more out of the venues and be more cost-effective, both of which will yield a better conference. The German team is presenting you with what we believe to be two very promising locations, and we would like you to form a decision in favour of having DebConf15 in Germany. We hope to have shown to you that we are a strong team with a clear goal. And we take no chances, which is another reason why we continue to develop two locations in parallel. Once you are able to make a decision for Germany, we can approach the venues and throw ourselves with much more weight into the negotiations. Asking us to limit ourselves to one location, or dictating one location over the other will only mean that we'll have a harder time negotiating, which will not only demotivate the team, but also cost us more money for less quality. > It seems the university space brings everyone closer to the > screen, and from what is in the pictures, at least it seems that > the University space has more seats. Yes, the university is clearly better geared towards lectures, but as previous DebConfs have proven, a lecture hall is not a requirement (Mexico, Edinburgh, Argentina, Banja Luka, Switzerland, …) The big rooms in Heidelberg have professional audio equipment, so is will be easy to hear the speaker in the back rows too. > Your table/chart, seems to indicate that the main talk space has > more seats it appears in the pictures. Are the pictures deceiving? The picture shows "parliamentarian seating", and our calculations are based on "cinema seating". We wouldn't have the tables, at least not throughout the room. > Ok. So this 53,000 Euro option to get the hostel setup with fast > internet seems a bit scary to me. (even if *maybe* the hostel > will pay it themselves.) I'd personally recommend solidifying > the network costs if you want to present Heidelberg as your > first choice. (IE: Debian *might* have to pay for this makes > this > a super non-starter in my mind.) Heidelberg university and the hostel know that Debian will not participate in those costs (we have now clarified this on the wiki page, thanks for bringing it to our attention). So unless hostel, university and city find a way, there won't be fibre… … which leaves temporary cabling through the zoo and microwaves, both of which would be adequate as well. > Q: What is the worst case cost to Debian to get adequate > networking setup at Heidelberg? No figures, but let's say either 200 metres of CAT-6 cabling, maybe in a conduit, and repeaters or appropriate switches, or rental of microwave equipment. There won't be any cost for bandwidth and we'll get as much as possible without any limitations. > > As for the Munich venue pricing, see above. To elaborate: we > > will have to hire security and possibly cleaning staff, but > > these won't be significant factors in the overall budget. We > > have not sought quotes from cleaners and security companies > > before a final answer from the university on the venue > > sponsoring (which includes the security requirements and > > conditions such as cleaning). However, if desired, we can try to > > get such quotes within the week. > > Can you make a reasonable, conservative estimate for these costs? No, we cannot make a reasonable estimate without knowing the requirements. But we can try to make a conservative estimate, since you insist… ;) The latest info we have will require us to have security personell only after-hours, so if we need to employ 3 people at 12.50 €/hour from 1800 until 0200, that's 3×8×12.5 or 300 €/day. If we choose to keep the value open all night, that'll be 225 €/day extra. If we have to pay security during the day too, that'll add 375 €/day. So we think we'll be looking at 700–900 €/day max, but don't hold us to it because we don't know the requirements yet. We do, however, have direct contacts into security companies and there could be discounts… Then there's cleaning — again, we don't know how much of that the university expects us to do, but to keep at least the toilets clean, we'd budget 4 hours at 8,50 € or 34 €/day plus 6 € of materials. Add to that maybe 80 man-hours at the end of DebConf and 200 € of materials and we're talking about an addition 900 € for the whole post-conference cleanup. Breaking it all down, we're looking at something like 800 – 1,000 €/day, which would be less than the daily venue hire in Heidelberg and absolutely within range. But as before: don't hold us to these figures while we don't know the exact needs, please. > > However, we would like to reiterate that the German bid > > encompasses two locations (with the same team behind both), > > which was a strategic choice by the team to improve the end > > result and drive down costs. Especially since we consider > > Heidelberg to be well on track for a conference in 2015, we have > > a bit more time to develop Munich and feel like we do not need > > to push for a decision too hard. > > I touched on this earlier, but please understand, that presenting > more than one option seems like it would make the job of those > making the decision much more difficult. On the contrary, it means that you can choose to put DC15 in Germany and know that it has a >100% chance of being successful. Moreover, you will know that the team is going to be even more motivated when they can properly negotiate with venues (negotiations suck when there is no choice), which means higher quality for lower prices. So opting for the German DC15 bid means you'll get a fantastic conference. We think that's making things easier, not more difficult! ;) On behalf of the team, -- .''`. martin f. krafft <madduck@debconf.org> : :' : DebConf orga team `. `'` `- DebConf14: Portland, OR, USA: http://debconf14.debconf.org if god is perfect, why did he create discontinuous functions?
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