On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 02:26:47PM +0100, raphael@walther.im wrote: > That being said, I didn't volunteer for this task. You might think that > asking: > 19:29:02 <rafw> yes, where is the budget? > Is equivalent to volunteer for it but that wasn't my intention at all and was > quite surprise when gwolf asked me to review it. > http://meetbot.debian.net/debconf-team/2014/debconf-team.2014-03-11-19.00.log.html#l-138 Well, I fear that you've done a lot of work due to a misunderstanding, then, because what gwolf asked was: 19:31:56 <gwolf> rafw: how would you feel about getting it under the DPL's view before the vote? I.e., asking whether you thought the budget was ready for the *DPL's* review. > I am listing the main point our budget we disagree on: > 1) sponsored amount of persons should be in the range of 120 based on > previous years experience My understanding is that you mean "the previous year's experience" (i.e., DC13), not "previous years' experience (i.e., multiple past years). In composing that initial draft budget, I did look at historical sponsorship data for past years and the draft numbers were based on this. But it's possible that I drew the numbers from the wrong place. I tried to do a straight-line comparison to DC10, which I believe is likely to be the closest fit to DC14 in terms of conference size and sponsored/non-sponsored breakdown, and also the one for which I can most easily get the data thanks to Richard's various reports at the time. It looks like the numbers I *should* have used are these: http://rkd.zgib.net/http/debconf/old-dc10-stuff/only-arrived/rooms-by-date-2.txt Those numbers show a peak of roughly 130 sponsored attendees. This is definitely lower than the 190 in the first draft budget (which is why I believe I took numbers from the wrong file before), but higher than your figure of 120. I think we should target 130 for now. This reduces the budget by $30k vs. the first draft. FWIW, not having direct access to the penta db, I find that Richard's website is the best source for historical data about recent DebConfs, even though it stops at DC11. If someone has the necessary raw penta access and wants to pull comparable statistics for more recent conferences, that would be wonderful. Even better would be if the necessary queries used to generate such reports would be saved somewhere in subversion so that they can be referred to in the future rather than needing to be reinvented each time from first principles. Would someone here be willing to do this? Not necessarily someone who currently has penta db access, but someone who knows SQL and has the time to work on providing these reports. > 2) sponsorship income of USD 156k seems to be really unrealistic now. > Numbers from previous DebConfs would suggest a realistic target in the > range of USD 90-100k I agree; it seems unlikely that we will hit the $156k target set in the first budget solely from external sponsors. However, until the sponsors are landed, any such numbers are speculative; the more important aspect of budgeting is to make sure we don't incur liabilities in excess of our *confirmed* sponsorship, and to identify which budget items can be added/dropped/scaled late in the process. > 3) we based our budget on the contracts My draft was also based on the contracts; so if there's anything there which you think is incorrect, that requires a bit more explanation/discussion. > 4) carry on surplus and deficit to next DebConf is insane I don't understand this comment. It's well understood that any surplus from the conference is returned to the Debian general fund, and release of funds for future DebConfs is subject to approval by the DPL. In this respect, having a surplus is perfectly fine, and the conference should never run a deficit - because it should never spend more money than it has via sponsorship + conference fees + DPL-approved Debian funds. -- 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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