Re: [Debconf-team] Updated budget for DC14

On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 12:14 AM, Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org> wrote:

On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 02:26:47PM +0100, raphael@walther.im wrote:

I.e., asking whether you thought the budget was ready for the *DPL's*
review.

The answer seems to be no, or he wouldn't have started this discussion.

> 1) sponsored amount of persons should be in the range of 120 based on
> previous years experience

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.

I agree, DC10 is a good starting point, but I'd lower the estimates a bit because NYC is easier to reach, especially from Europe.

With 130 the bursaries team can be quite generous IMO.

Just as a reference: one sponsored attendee costs around 500USD.

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.

We pulled out these numbers for DC13 planning, but I couldn't find them.

> 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.

Looking at previous years sponsorship income, we should set a realistic target based on those values:

(DC12: 60k, DC11: 55k DC10: 90k, DC9: 120k)

I'd base it on DC10 and would suggest a target of 90-100k (and put 100k in the budget)

> 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.

The current contract only has 4 parameters:

* primary check-in dates food

* primary check-in dates accomodation

* secondary check-in dates food

* secondary check-in dates accomodation

And if I understand the contract correctly we have to provide those parameters 30 days ahead of the conference.

I assume you plan on giving them the actual food/accomodation values per night, but I couldn't find a way to do this with the current contract.

My preferred option would be to have an updated contract with a minimum of nights/food and a price for each additional night/meal.

We still have some time to revise the contract and provide them with better estimates closer to the conference.

> 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.

In previous years we planned with a realistic (or with darst's planning a pessimistic) estimate of sponsorship income.

A budget was then prepared based on those values to make sure a basic DebConf can happen.

Closer to the conference date the actual amount of sponsorship raised is put in the budget to see how many attendees can be sponsored based on the sponsorship income.

IMO: Only at this point it makes sense to ask for money from Debian, if e.g. the sponsorship target was not reached or due to some other unforseen circumstances.

The reason why we should agree on a budget soon is to start working on travel sponsorship requests.

My suggestion is to use a budget of 25k for travel sponsorship and split it into 15k for existing Debian contributors and 10k for new contributors. (at DC13 we had a budget of 25k for Debian contributors, but in the end only 10k was paid)

Philipp