also sprach Bernelle Verster <bernellev@gmail.com> [2015-11-09 11:33 +1300]:
> > The bag is useful to hold swag from sponsors and for stuff to be
> > carried around. I don't think it'll fly well to do without.
>
> Noted, but if advance notice is given for people to bring their
> own??
You still have to somehow distribute the swag to the attendees at
checkin. But a DC14-like cotton bag would also do and those are
useful in any number…
> I feel that this would be best settled by asking debconfers. How
> do we do polls in Debian?
Laura suggested framadate on storm.debian.net, or you could ask
Daniel what he used for the t-shirt colours.
> > And while I cannot picture dozens of Debianites wrapped up in
> > blankets, I suppose it does depend a bit on what temperature to
> > expect. Are you secretly preparing us for the power outages? ;)
>
> It's winter, and DebConf is not often held in winter, so I'm thinking
> how to leverage that as an opportunity. Just ideas ... not sold on
> anything...
And I wasn't trying to dissuade you.
> > That sound expensive. FTR, the DC15 bags were ca. 4 € or 60 ZAR.
> > Arguably, we were on the cheap side, but even the DC13 laptop bags
> > weren't much more expensive than that.
>
> There are many options for the R60 - R80 or so price range. Depends
> what we go for. I'm aiming the budget for the conservative range
> (sneakily, perhaps :) ).
There are two sides to conservative. You are being conservative from
the procurement side of things, i.e. maximise your allowance for
maximum choice when you have to place an order. From the budget
perspective, it's the other way, e.g. conservatively only budget R60
for the bags and only increase that when funds become available.
You know this, but I wanted to point it out anyway because I'd hate
to get to a situation where you identified a fantastic bag (possibly
backed by a DebConf poll, which does create expectations btw.…) and
then we don't have the funds for it.
> Whatever we go for, I'd rather have less swag items of better
> quality, than junk.
Laudable.
> > Perfect. Otoh, don't we have enough lanyards from DC15 left over?
>
> Possibly. I thought they were scratchy though, but I guess we can
> re-use them.
I've not heard anything about scratchiness. They weren't the
prettiest of all, but we did order 1.000 of them, I believe, and
there ought to be enough already in ZA for you to use. Let attendees
who don't like them scratch their own whatever.
> >> - Open weekend
> >> R20 000
> >
> > For what?
>
> No idea. I haven't thought this through yet. Could probably make do
> with whatever I have. Maybe R5 000 for flyers, some T-shirts,
> stickers, and things to give away?
There's a catch-22 here when you say that you could probably make do
with whatever you have/get. The Open Weekend is too new of an idea
to get that sort of priority in the budget that it just gets
a blanket fund assignment. Don't read this the wrong way though, all
I am trying to suggest is that a good way to break the catch-22
might be to devise a plan first.
R20.000 doesn't sound like out of this world, but — provided we have
it — it is sponsor money and thus must be put to use properly.
Giveaways are a possibility ("increase Debian visibility/popularity
in ZA → more influence and possibly new contributors", which I'd say
is a weak line of argumentation) but the relations need to be right.
Other uses of Open Weekend funds might include snacks/coffee (more
visitors), invited speakers, entertainment, a raffle, etc.
> > Rather I think we'll fare much better with on-site babysitters
> > like at DC15. Is this a possibility?
>
> It could, but this day-care centre is about 100m from the venue.
> (Not having kids) I still think this is a reasonable amount of
> space :).
At the price quoted, I think it'd be something more parents would
consider, but there'd still be those who wouldn't want to leave
their kids there alone. Are parents able to stay around?
Also, you said that there are limited spaces? What do we do with the
other kids? Can we create another space for them where we
self-organise?
> The bottom line for this conversation though is that I think is
> this is likely not needed in the budget?
If we can negotiate a fixed price that allows us to offer
child-care, then I'd say we should budget for that and just make
things easier for everyone. We are also offering this as a perk to
sponsors.
But letting parents pay directly also works. In that case we'll need
to consider this for sponsorship requests though. We won't pay for
DDs to bring their kids on airplanes or to accomodate them, but we
could sponsor child care as part of the deal. That is if we want to
position DebConf as a family-friendly conference, which I hope we
do.
> The venue this year will have three levels so should be easy to
> keep some as quiet levels and some as kid-friendly...
Yeah, possibly the most important lesson learnt from DC15…
--
.''`. martin f. krafft <madduck@debconf.org> @martinkrafft
: :' : DebConf orga team
`. `'`
`- DebConf16: Cape Town: https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf16
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