Hi folks, I've updated the budget in git now to reflect the latest approved changes for the video team. In the process, I've taken a pass over the rest of the budget, and have bad news: we have way more money in the DebConf14 accounts than we're actually going to use. Here's a breakdown of where we sit relative to the budget today. If you don't care about the play-by-play, scroll down to the bottom of the mail for a question for the team + chairs. - Originally, we projected a maximum of 143 sponsored attendees per night. The actual confirmed number is 108. The number of total attendees looks like it's on track (280 people registered, and I'm expecting we'll continue to pick up locals between now and the start), but more of this is self-paid / local than estimated, so this puts us roughly 20% below budget for accommodation sponsorship (i.e., $6000 under). - The travel sponsorship allocation will also not all be used. We have had some people who were granted travel sponsorship inform us that they will not be using it - either because they aren't able to make it to the conference, or because they have found someone else to pay their trip. So even though bursaries actually allocated travel sponsorship funds $850 *over* what was in the budget (knowing at that point that there was overage in the food/accom sponsorship budget), due to those cancellations, we appear to be between $1700 and $2300 under budget. It is my recommendation that for future years, we look at the historic numbers for travel sponsorship committments vs. disbursements and give the bursaries team an explicit budget overcommit percentage for travel sponsorship. E.g., in this case we could have overcommitted 5% and, with cancellations, still stayed in budget. Doing so explicitly would minimize unused travel sponsorship funds, while helping the funds be used most efficiently by letting attendees buy cheaper plane tickets. - Food: also should be under budget, for the same reason as the accom being under budget. The food budget was for $25000 (not counting the conference dinner), and my current projection is $20000 - and thanks to our ability to undercommit to PSU the number of meals, possibly quite a bit less than this depending on attendees' actual eating patterns. I am still waiting for confirmed pricing from PSU for all the meals, including the special things like the day trip sack lunch. - t-shirts: due to some production-side delays, we have had to order these with expedited shipping, which brought our total to $2770 - $306 over budget. However, the budget was also not taking into account the needs for video team and staff shirts; had we done so, this would have surely been in budget still. - conference bags: Patty got approval from Moray to get nicer bags since the money is available; this raises the budget from $1840 to $2148 (+$308) - lanyards: Patty also got approval to add Debian-branded lanyards to the budget. $800; the hope is that we will also be able to recollect these from people at the end of the conference and reuse these in the future. - day trip: with a budget of $10,884, we are likely to use less that $5000 of this with the current plan. (Assumes the food budget covers the sack lunch). -$5884. - speaker travel/accommodation: we did not use this budget at all. We did have one invited speaker inquire about accommodation sponsorship, but it was someone who was already staying in the dorms and is now accounted for in the sponsored accom budget. -$3000! - venue rental: with the latest proposal from Carl on debconf-video regarding setup schedule, we will be over budget due to the added room rentals but not by much (~$1000). - A/V rentals: this is another thing we didn't have good estimates for until recently. We've just adjusted the budget to include A/V rentals at $900, but the quote from PSU for all the relevant equipment stands closer to $3000. Carl and I are working to make sure we do things as economically as possible (borrowing instead of equipment wherever feasible), but that price is probably not going to come down much. So, +$2100. But if all else fails, maybe this is "other unforeseen expenses", for which we have $3000 in the budget... - Transportation for speakers: I'm not sure why speaker transportation was separate from speaker travel in the DC13 budget, but this is also effectively 0 this year. -$300. Bottom line: even with the added budget approvals recently, we are still coming in roughly $15000 under budget. And this is on a budget that was already *fully funded* from this year's income (sponsorship + registration fees). If I've done the math right, we're looking at $145k in total expenses. We have booked $170k in income for DebConf14, *not* counting the contributions from Debian's general funds. So instead of using $36,000 of Debian money, it looks like we're going to be returning over $20,000 more to Debian at the end of this cycle. So the question I have for the team is: are there other things we should be spending money on to make this a good conference, that we have shied away from due to money concerns? I can suggest two possibilities. - Water bottles. Sturdy, reusable aluminum water bottles - branded with the Debian logo, of course! - would be a nice perk to send people home with, that would be useful during the conference too. (And they would definitely come in handy for people on the day trip.) They are also something that we could order extra of - I'm *sure* that people would be interested in buying extras. - Beverage service. We can always let people fill their water bottles at the drinking fountains, and there are beverages available for purchase down on the first floor. If we want to provide anything more than that to our attendees, it has to be contracted with the authorized caterer (Aramark). We have a quote for this below. It's basically a complete rip-off for anything beyond water, but those are the rules we have to play by if we want something like this. Depending on how they count "per person" for coffee and tea, this could be as much as $600/day. So personally, I think if we do anything here it should only be water; and if it's only water I'm not sure it adds value over just buying reusable water bottles for everyone. Should we pursue either of these options? Are there any other nice-to-haves that we should consider adding? ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Hudspeth, Lisa Date: Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 7:49 AM Subject: RE: Debconf To: Mark Brinkmann Mark, We offer a bulk water service which includes 1- 3 gallon container of water that would be refreshed 2 times during the day according to their breaks. It is $25 for the 1- 3 gallon container. Depending on the number of people attending the conference they can add to the number of containers they want for an additional $25 for each one. Coffee and Tea Service would be $2.00 per person. (10 person minimum) The Fresh Garden Crudites served with Ranch Hummus and grilled pita triangles is $3.00 per person.(10 person minimum) Assorted Cookies is $16 for 1 dozen. Assorted cookies and brownies is $2.00 per person.(10 person minimum) Let me know if you would like for me to speak with them directly. Also, if they are an outside group there is a gratuity of 18% added onto the food and beverage. Lisa ----- End forwarded message ----- Thanks, -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/ slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org
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