On Sun, Jun 19, 2011 at 08:35:36PM -0400, Richard Darst wrote:
> I am one of the people watching the budget for DebConf, and as part of
> that I have recently gone back and tabulated an actual balance sheet
> for DebConf9 and DebConf10. I thought I would share it here.
Thanks for this report Richard, it's very valuable in determining
whether we could keep for DebConf some of the goals we have set earlier
on this year.
For those who haven't followed discussions on the debconf-team list, a
brief summary is in order. DebConf finances are Debian's finances, but
at the same time DebConf needs some autonomy in dealing with money for a
time window centered on the event itself. We have hereby decided that
from now on DebConf finances will be "forked" at the first need of
paying money for the forthcoming DebConf and "merged" back into Debian
finances proper ASAP after the end of the conference (usually,
immediately after the last big post-DebConf expenses have been paid).
In that respect, the notion of "surplus" from one DebConf to the other
is not as relevant as it was before. Nonetheless, it still is an
important figure to know, given that another important goal we have set
forward is that of having DebConf being an amortized 0 cost event. That
means that it is fine for a specific edition of DebConf to "gain" quite
some money, and for another to "lose" some, as long as we are
responsible and make an effort to have those effects balance each other
in the long run.
> DebConf 9 had €95715.65 income, €61130.10 expenses, for a net gain of
> €34585.55. DC9 "took" €9960.17 from Debian (mostly at SPI; Debian
> allocated USD20k when the budget looked bad), used €462.00 of DC8
> surplus. DC9 passed on €44970.55 on to DebConf10 (mostly at FFIS).
> [dc09-bal] http://rkd.zgib.net/http/debconf/dc9/
>
> DebConf10 had €59716.21 of income, and €130300.76 of expenses, for a
> net loss of €34584.57. DebConf10 took €44970.55 of DC9 surplus,
> €443.82 of DC8 surplus, and in the end returned €10580.45 to Debian.
> DC9 and DC10 combined had a large net transfer of Debian money from
> SPI to FFIS, since together they got more income in Europe and spent
> more in the USA.
> [dc10-bal] http://rkd.zgib.net/http/debconf/dc10/
>
> Overall, these two conferences balanced each other out surprisingly
> well.
This is so, however, considering some non-surplus income coming "from
Debian", right? (your DebConf9 notes above on that subject are a bit
ambiguous to me, and I'm not sure I'm reading the ledger files right)
> The DC8 final report states there was further surplus money from DC8,
> on the order of €12000. I am not tracking this, since I have no means
> to (and can't verify it myself), but I hope it was absorbed into
> Debian funds. I don't know how much Debian has contributed to and
> taken back from DebConf up until and including DC8.
These seem to roughly correspond to DC9 initial "surplus", within an
error of ~2000 EUR.
Anyhow, at this point the above are a little more than details. One way
or another the numbers shows that: either in the past 2 years we have
already started respecting the desiderata of being an amortized 0 cost
event; or it is at hand's reach for future editions.
Thanks again for digging up the numbers,
Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -<>- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Quando anche i santi ti voltano le spalle, | . |. I've fans everywhere
ti resta John Fante -- V. Capossela .......| ..: |.......... -- C. Adams
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