Re: [Debconf-team] Overcommitting travel sponsorship (was: Rough timeline idea for DC15 and the CfP)

On 8 December 2014 at 19:38, martin f krafft <madduck@debconf.org> wrote:

In the past, we've had people approved for travel sponsorship who
then didn't claim the funds, including those who didn't even tell
us. While I think that we should make sure that people know that
this sort of behaviour will negatively impact future bursary
decisions,
...

​I don't know why you'd think not claiming the funds is ever a bad thing. Would you think it was a bad thing if they claimed the funds, then made a donation of the same amount back to Debian/debconf (either immediately, or a few months later when finances allowed)?​

Now, with my budgeting hat on, I'd like to say that I find the idea
of budget overcommittal quite contrary to budgeting itself.

​I think this is mistaken -- if you expect some number/percentage of people to not take up the travel budget that they have a right to take up you can (and should) just represent that in the budget. eg:​

  Intercontinental travel grants:

    Average cost: $2,000

    Percent covered: 50%

    Number offered: 25

    Take up expected: 80%

    Number expected: 20

    Cost (expected): $20,000

    Cost (maximum): $25,000

  "Local" travel grants:

    Average cost: $400

    Percent covered: 75%

    Number offered: 70

    Take up expected: 50%

    Number expected: 35    

    Cost (expected): $10,500

    Cost (maximum): $21,000

  Total travel cost: $30,500 (expected) $46,000 (maximum)

Let's
instead just increase the allocation for the travel sponsorship
budget and be prepared to know what to do with money we don't spend.

​A budget is meant to help you plan and make decisions -- so if you're expecting only 2/3rd of the travel budget that you end up offering to be taken up, you want to be able to both (a) know how much that 1/3rd is in actual dollars so you can plan some fun/productive things to do with it; and also (b) keep track of whether your expectations are panning out, so that if your estimate's wrong, you can take action on it before there's an actual disaster on your hands.

Having columns covering different scenarios for each of the budget line items, something like:

 - already committed to

 - worst case scenario (no sponsors, max attendance, etc)

 - conservative estimate (last conference -10%)

 - realistic/optimistic scenario (best conference ever)

might work. I think those columns would work well since they're a strict progression from better to worse -- with what's already happened providing a lower limit that keeps the budget tied to reality as the conference grows nearer. The idea would be that all the numbers in the "worst case" scenario add up to a loss that Debian can handle, while ideally the conservative estimate about breaks even, and in the optimistic scenario, you provide some funds back to Debian that can help next DebConf, etc. It can tell you things like "okay, in our worst case scenario we can't actually accept more than 50 sponsored attendees, but we're still expecting/hoping to be able to cover 100 based on the sponsors we're working on" or "with the current committed sponsors, we can only make the worst case remain at an acceptable loss by not having the ballroom gala, so we still can't commit to that yet".

Here the "worst case" would be 100% take up of travel grants, while your conservative estimate might just be whatever happened in previous years. (Note that from a budget perspective more attendees is "worse", even though from a wider perspective it's better -- budgets are simple: less money at the end of the day = bad, more money = good)

​

Cheers,

aj

Anthony Towns <aj@erisian.com.au>