Beverage service or a cart of cold water and juices might be nice. PSU gets warm during the day even outside of the summer months.
We could also hire coffee and donuts for about $1500 voodoo could serve everyone coffee and donuts from their pink truck in the mornings.
On Aug 16, 2014 8:34 PM, "Steve Langasek" <vorlon@debian.org> wrote:
>
> 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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