Colleagues, I wanted to report on the financial closing of the Code4Lib 2014 account. All of the bills have been paid for and the reimbursements have been sent. This year, we have a surplus of $29,419.80 that we will be able to pass onto the Code4Lib 2015 committee. I can say with great confidence that much of this surplus is possible through the excellent contract negotiation and cost management of CONCENTRA, whom we hired this year.
The very first action CONCENTRA enabled for us was to change hotel venues because the first hotel contract we reviewed was overly restrictive and provided no incentives to the conference. At the venue were the conference was located, we received a sizeable number of kick backs of hotel rooms that offset costs of scholarship awardees and the keynote speakers, in addition to CONCENTRA's experience in estimated the number of meals needed so that we did not overcommit. Finally, CONCENTRA was instrumental in getting the hotel to not only improve the wireless, but also have the charges withdrawn for the days in which the wifi service was unacceptable. These are just a few of the examples of financial savings CONCENTRA's work provided. Thank you to Ann Elsner and her staff at Duke University for hosting the financial services for the conference! I am very proud of the hosting efforts of my colleagues at Duke University, NC State University, and UNC Chapel Hill, most especially of my co-Chair Emily Lynema. None of this would have been possible without all of the excellent volunteers locally, as well as those of you in the community who volunteered in other ways. If anyone has any final questions about Code4Lib 2014, please do let me know. Otherwise, I look forward to a successful Code4Lib 2015 in Portland! Cheers, Tim -- Tim McGeary Director of Library & Information Technology University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill timmcge...@gmail.com GTalk/Yahoo/Skype/Twitter: timmcgeary 484-294-7660 (cell)