Re: [Debconf-team] make bed selection a lottery
On Mon, Apr 08, 2013 at 03:36:01PM +0200, Didier 'OdyX' Raboud wrote: P.S. I and initially thought [0] that a perfect DebConf would offer accomodation and food to everyone. But numbers showed me that past DebConfs had less than 50% of the registrations requesting for sponsored accomodation and food. So half of the attendees have in the past been ready and willing to cover their accomodation and food costs, that has to be taken into account too. That's because most registrations don't have accom. In fact, probably most aren't even around most of the time. It's usually 20-40 people who pay for their registration, fairly constant per year. A fair fraction of them just register late and would probably have sponsored otherwise. The exact number of sponsored varies per year, but the goal has generally been that everyone who doesn't appear a tourist who registers on time gets sponsored. - richard -- | Richard Darst - http://rkd.zgib.net/ - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf13 accomodation/food/fees prices proposal
This whole subthread about color names illustrates why people like me don't provide suggestions any more (which turns into a feedback loop). Moray has an excellent point, making things more obscure is going to lead to problems later. It would be best to make registration as obvious as possible, without needing to dig through layers of things to understand. Simplicity has been my overriding goal this year. Of course, right now it seems that technical beauty is better and thus discussing it won't help anything. I realize that sending this message may have a demotivating effect, but right now it looks like it is naysaying moray vs a highly organized local team. It's just that the rest of us are no longer invested since (in my case at least) the cost to benefit ratio is not worth it. I just wanted to clarify that other people support moray's viewpoints (not just here, but in general), and point out that DebConf general consensus is being lost as most of us have given up arguing. And now, it's too late to adjust team dynamics, so I leave it in the localteam's able hands to figure it out and make it work. - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - pyke: up 1 day, 18:03 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] [Debconf-discuss] Anonymous donation to Debconf 13
On Fri, Nov 30, 2012 at 06:44:50PM +, Ian Jackson wrote: 1. Is it true that there was a proposal that anyone should make an anonymous donation or loan to Debconf 13 ? yes If so: 2. Exactly what was proposed, and when was it proposed ? During the le camp visit/BSP, it was presented to the team as we have already gotten a lot of sponsorship. In debconf-team IRC, it was stated as sponsorship, a few lines in debconf-sponsors (private) made me wonder if it really was sponsorship and could really be counted as part of our income. See below for what happened next. The debconf-sponsors IRC bit was something like 2 x 20 kCHF, which we can use only if we go to le camp, to be paid back after we have fundraised enough, but before we paid any travel sponsorship. 3. Were any conditions attached ? If so what were the conditions ? The condition was that we had to go to le camp. Conversely, for a few days, this was used as part of the reason to go to le camp and avoid considering anything else. The story of le camp is long and varied. Around that time, the biggest concern was the budget. Instead of just trying to find faults in le camp, we were trying to make it work somehow. This money was used as part of a justification to shut down consideration of other venues (and thus, the benefits of le camp), or any other consideration of the budget. (It took weeks more of arguing to switch to a plan of signing for only one week now, and then adding another week after money was raised.) So, formally, this money hasn't had any effect on any decisions or the venue selection. But people continue to be unhappy because a lot of different factors have made it so that the venue wasn't externally examined on its merits relative to other options. 4. How far did the discussions progress (so far) ? Has the proposal now been abandoned and if so, when ? As there were no public discussions, I don't know. I asked hug about this money, expressing concerns that they thought they were making a loan, but there was a high chance that we would end up keeping the money, leading to feelings of misrepresentation. hug contacted these donors, explained the risk of us spending more money than we had, and within a few days of this BSP, hug sent an email saying this was no longer to be considered. I never knew of a decision where the debconf-team actually decided to decline this. So, as I understand it, the offer wasn't rejected, it was retracted by the people who offered it. 5. Were the proposed donors individuals (if so how many?), a company, a government, or an NGO ? I don't know. 6. Were the proposed donors in positions of authority or governance in relation to Debconf ? Examples of people in positions of authority or governance in relation to Debconf include the DPL, the DPL helpers tasked with Debconf-related tasks, people involved with Debconf accounting on behalf of SPI or FFIS, and of course members of the Debconf global or local teams. I don't know. 7. Who initiated the proposal ? Was it (a) the prospective donor; or (b) a member of the DC global team; or (c) a member of the DC13 local team; or (d) some third party ? If (b) or (c), which individual member(s) of the team ? I don't know, but probably people at the le camp BSP were initiators. At the least, that is where it was arranged. 8. Was the existence of this proposal made formally known to the full DC team (eg on the internal private mailing list) ? The conditions were certainly never made clear, and were misunderstood or misrepresented by a lot of people. To the public team, it was just presented as we have lots of sponsorship already. It was only one line hidden in private IRC that implied it was more complicated than that. It was retracted before it existed long enough to be peer-reviewed, which I think is a acceptable outcome. In terms of sponsorship, there isn't anything to worry about. The effect on the decision is debatable. - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - pyke: up 33 days, 16:59 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] LeCamp - Approval of budget and signing the contract
Hi, I've been helping with this, so I should be able to answer these questions. I helped hug make the original email sent here, too, so I can be blamed for anything in the budget or initial email, too. On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 04:33:31PM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: I'm having trouble interpreting the section under the heading local estimates. Does this refer to estimates of the number of local sponsors you expect to find at each of these levels, or does it refer to something else? (I note that the numbers in this column for gold and silver appear to be greater than the estimated total numbers.) local estimates on the right, apart from the main column, were a itemization of who might be expected from several months ago. Within the budget itself is a current guess of what sponsorship we might get. This is *not* how much sponsorship we have now, it is only a prediction. This is why I (personally) am a bit skeptical of this budget approval, since it isn't an authorization to spend this much (if income is lower) or mean we can't do more (if income is higher). At most, it's a sanity check before signing a contract (though all the other research we've done is a better indication if that's a good idea financially or not). For the calculation of person-days, you've indicated 2090 person-days with 60 DebCamp attendees. This amounts to an average of 290 attendees per day of DebConf. Does this budget assume all of these attendees are staying on-site at LeCamp? Per my mail of 20121125024909.ga12...@virgil.dodds.net, I do not believe it is realistic to project we will have 290 adult DebConf attendees staying on site at Le Camp. Yes, so far. And yeah, it may very well be less, but at least this is who we could afford to pay for. If it's less due to other issues, it makes our financial position better (and we can pay other things). The income from accomodation fees and professional and corporate registrations exceeds the number of 1 and 2 person rooms listed on http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf13/LeCamp/Rooms. What assumptions have gone into the calculation of these quantities for the different kinds of fees, and how do these assumptions line up with the known facts about available accomodation? At one point we thought there were 44 two-person room beds. If this is less, then it would need modification. I think a bigger uncertainty is how the accommodation+food/professional fee will be split: I think that will reduce our income more. But attempts to encourage more payers may counteract that. I see bar profit has been added to the budget, which I didn't notice before. I think until we know more about just how this bar will work and if it's the kind of people will use (and the profit margins), we shouldn't count on that money (see a previous thing about my goal of only counting money which is well-known). This budget is a bit more forward-thinking than my last one, which was more conservative and designed to increase as we got more money, keeping it balanced (or safe) at all times. This is more of a guess as to what it will like in 8 months, I think. - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - pyke: up 26 days, 3:31 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] LeCamp - Approval of budget and signing the contract
On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 12:32:19AM +0100, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 11:47:15PM +0100, Philipp Hug wrote: As Gaudenz and I are scheduled to negotiate and sign a one-week contract with LeCamp this Wednesday, we're formally asking the DebConf chairs for approval of this budget and for permission to sign the contract. 1) Where is the contract? http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debconf-data/dc13/accounting/contracts/Le_Camp/ Has one from 2012-10-30, not sure if anything newer is available. I think it may only be discussions so far. I take you and Gaudenz have been asked to sign the contract on behalf of the association, do you confirm? Are the bylaws of the association available anywhere for review? (possibly in one of the following languages: English, French, Italian). http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debconf-data/dc13/association/ (sorry for the quick links, not sure what else there is to say) - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - pyke: up 26 days, 3:47 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
[Debconf-team] regarding dc13 location...
Hi, I've tried to not express an opinion about venue decisions, because it is too controversial and I would rather focus on making all options better. However, I think too many people are being too silent about their preferences, and that's leading to appearance of overall support, and hidden factionalism in lots of private conversations. This email is designed to be public and hope to put a little bit of an end to that factionalism. I'd rather attend a DebConf in a populated area. I'd be more likely to go if it was in a populated area (out of general principle), but of course since haven't been coming anyway that is only of limited use. By many accounts, our other options (costing either the same or less) have a lot of overall positives for normal attendees, and thus I am in favor of it. I'm also sure that no matter where we go, we'll make the best of everything. A lot of my previous statements shouldn't be taken as criticizing le camp. Producing a plan that is more flexible to whatever the actual income is does that. More troubling than money was rejection of any attempt to adjust the contract to make it more suitable for DebConf (less time). Now that hug has tried talking to le camp, it seems like it is pretty easy to make things better. I think the sense of not enough locals to help on le camp is due mostly to the factionalism. There hasn't been an actual decision made, all previous decisions on this topic were made under duress: if you pick anything else there won't be DebConf and similar things, which I think isn't correct. A similar thing goes for urgency of signing sooner as an argument against any rational comparison of venues. If there wasn't such a divisive atmosphere and we could have actually presented all options moths ago, we wouldn't be here. So, I think the rambly point of this email is to encourage people to voice their actual feelings, and not be put back by backlash that occurs when doing it. I'm going to keep doing what I have been doing and try to stay out as much as I can (aiding all options), and what we actually do depends on what others think... - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - pyke: up 24 days, 5:39 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] dc13 draft budget, 2012-11-20
Hi, Some additional information: On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 12:39:05PM -0500, Richard Darst wrote: Hi, Here is found a draft budget: http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debconf-data/dc13/accounting/budget.ods?view=co Given 100 kCHF sponsorship (hug and I consider this to be a lot but somewhat safe for now), we can afford: 40 debcamp attendees 155 debconf attendees 15 kCHF travel sponsorship In order to host 100/300 attendees and 30kCHF travel sponsorship, one would need 160 kCHF of sponsorship income (assuming everything else the same). There is no safety margin included in this budget. I agree there should be, but for now I am trying to show what happens ideally. One safety margin comes from adding in DC12 surplus, and then expecting a similar DC13 surplus. This will be added in later, just remember that at some point some money will go to surplus, not more attendees. re: VAT: normally these budgets and numbers are done without VAT. 600 CHF includes plenty of margin to have VAT included, and there is a separate budget line item for the VAT. It'll have to be checked up on later once hug knows more. (and, to reply to holger here, yes, this is a living document and I want to improve it by increasing sponsorship, which will then be allocated to other things. budget-gaudenz.ods can be deleted, the other one is deleted but just appears in the browser). I'm glad that this is relatively uncontroversial. - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - pyke: up 20 days, 19:12 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] dc13 draft budget, 2012-11-20
On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 08:23:37PM +0100, Daniel Pocock wrote: Not quite... I would really like to understand your logic for 60 professional and 2 corporate Okay, this is right. I was going to reply but didn't have time. With 42 professional / 2 corporate (= 44 rooms which are professional-quality), that gives us 40/110 attendees and 15 kCHF travel sponsorship. I included it in there just because we know how professional works and everyone agrees to *very* heavily encourage more professionals. And then some might see the budget as just laughable and not take it seriously. But realize: if people don't register as professional, and we don't make a sponsorship windfall, this will be a tiny tiny debconf. But I am not too worried about that right now. Now that I think about it, a bigger question is the splitting of costs of attendance (food, accom) with professional fee. If this is done, more people may pay just food+accom which would reduce this income greatly. - Richard p.s. I added a cell in the spreadsheet listing effective accom per night (total accom cost / person-days). It is currently 47 €/night. That is a *lot* and explains why this costs so much relative to our other options. -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - pyke: up 20 days, 20:04 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
[Debconf-team] le camp and people attending partial weeks?
Hi, I imagine this has already been discussed, but if we have lots of people coming for partial weeks, can le camp handle this, and more importantly, only charge us for when they are there? (Only relevant for food, due to accom forfait... but might be relevant for accom if we get enough people). There is also a slight logistical overhead that should be at least discussed with le camp. I remember DC11 when we were promised magic buses but they didn't happen when someone realized people arrived all the time. I expect the answer will be we can handle it, but it's worth discussing with them. Any ability for flexibility will lead directly to a greater DC13 surplus. - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - pyke: up 20 days, 20:31 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
[Debconf-team] dc13 draft budget, 2012-11-20
Hi, Here is found a draft budget: http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debconf-data/dc13/accounting/budget.ods?view=co This is designed to be a reasonable, balanced, and safe budget as of now. This means: - Not estimating a huge amount of sponsorship (just a lot) - Not including speculative sources of income - Reducing attendees to balance it. I know certain people want to put in large amounts of sponsorship and other income, but I (and hug) don't want to do that, since that is speculation and not a responsible thing to ask to be approved. So, here is what hug and I hope the plan to be: As we get more committed sponsorship, we will slowly increase the number of available sponsored spots. As for other income like bar profit or bed upselling, these are very much indeterminate, and previous numbers are just guesses. Here is my proposal: we don't add in those types of incomes until there is a specific plan, posted to the lists, and thus is able to be subject to peer review for feasibility. This is why things like attendee fee isn't included (widely criticized on lists) or bar profit/bed upselling (there isn't a plan, so how can we guess how many people will do it?). Given 100 kCHF sponsorship (hug and I consider this to be a lot but somewhat safe for now), we can afford: 40 debcamp attendees 155 debconf attendees 15 kCHF travel sponsorship 6 debcamp days 7 debconf days Unsponsored day trip (budget includes only food we'd pay otherwise) No special budget conference dinner ( Note: this would mean le camp would only earn about 100 kCHF from us, would this be an issue?) The number of professionals is a bit high relative to what was agreed before, but I am assuming a stronger push for this (since it's the only way to make this work). If this doesn't work out, reduce the numbers even more. ~ So, what does this mean? If you want something to approve, you can use this. This is a *small* conference, but if one wants to continue on the current course, it is what we have for now. People aren't going to like this budget. The options are: - wait and see if the sponsorship basket continues to go like it is. We should know a lot more in only a month, and then hug and I will revise the number of attendees upward. - Propose specific plans for getting more income from attendees, and see what people think. - Cut even more things (but there really isn't much room for that...) - What else? Thanks, - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - pyke: up 19 days, 17:28 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] A better budget analysis
On Tue, Nov 06, 2012 at 10:50:13PM -0600, Gunnar Wolf wrote: Daniel Pocock dijo [Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 02:39:48PM +0100]: (...) It may be worth surveying those people who paid the fee in the last 2 years: - do they prefer to only pay `actual per-person cost', or paying a full 600 CHF is OK for them? - what do they think about the accommodation proposals? As they are the ones paying, these people should be listened to very closely when choosing between Interlaken and Le Camp. - would they prefer to pay a lower fee (meals only, for example) and sleep off site? This mail is an example of what I *DON'T* want DebConf to become. As they are the ones paying, these people should be listened to very closely... NO. Not at all. If you are a paying professional, we will I interpreted this as since we are trying to milk professional attendees this year as a source of DebConf funding, we should see how to make 'register as professional' attractive to more people. Everyone would rather not make DebConf targeted at professionals exclusively, it's just been brought up this year much more than some recent years, which to me is the real DC13 difference. - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - pyke: up 6 days, 8:55 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
[Debconf-team] my final analysis of budget before today's meeting
Hi, The budget is hotly debated before the meeting tomorrow. I think that in a lot of ways, this is a proxy for other, unrelated issues about venue selection. I would like to stay out of that argument, since we need some somewhat objective data, and also I have a history of not even going to DebConf. For a while, the le camp budget was a serious concern, now, we can't really argue that le camp might bankrupt us. Instead, the question is more about trade-offs. There are all sorts of predictions for the amount of money we will get, with most centered on 150% to 200% of DC12 amount (90 -- 120 kCHF). Most locals predict more, most longer term people predict less. This is a bit unfortunate, since this is an example of the budget as proxy for le camp considerations thing, and I hope that we can minimize the effects of that. Le camp won't bankrupt us. Even under the worst projections, we can simply reduce the number of sponsored attendees, which reduces the food cost. At worst case (not that it would be here), we could pay only the forfait, and have a number of attendees trending to zero and keep our expenses to the ~7--8 range. Clearly, this is not a good since it mean spending a lot of money for not much gain. On the other hand, there are other hand options on the table, which have a smaller fixed cost (forfait, minimum number of people). There is at least Interlaken, and Daniel may have even been investigating other options more recently. Compared to le camp, these options have been developed much less, so we know a lot less about the details. However, this originally started as a proof of concept, to show that there were options which costed similarly. These are just initial quotes, and still have lots of room for shopping and negotiation. The most powerful aspect of this option is the ability to continue to negotiate down, and have other options to reduce the cost. What is reasonably sure is that le camp will cost more per person at all but the very highest occupancy levels, due to the forfait. For all but the largest amounts of money (200 kCHF and more), Interlaken will allow more sponsored attendees to come. For more typical values of the sponsorship we will get, it is a significant difference. Ways to minimize this difference would be to reduce the length of DebCamp, to reduce the days we are paying for the whole camp without it being full. One method of solving the le camp money problems has been to attempt to extract more income from attendees. While not specific to le camp, it has been used to pad the budget and thus increase the number of attendees. The desirability of this can be discussed both in a venue-independent manner, and in the context of le camp. ~~~ Data: le camp cost= 95 kCHF + 225 CHF * attendee_weeks interlaken cost = 50 kCHF + 350 CHF * attendee_weeks These are approximate, but get the point across. interlaken has the potential for _both_ numbers to go down, le camp, not so much unless attendees go to (practically nonexistant) other food services. The equivalence point is around 360 person-weeks (camp+conf) and independent of the venue-independent overhead costs. We are unlikely to get this many person-weeks total. The exact line-items do not matter too much beyond the above summary, but maybe I can update the spreadsheet. So, in short, the question can't really be can we afford le camp but instead are the benefits of le camp worth the fewer number of attendees, given the risk of limited money? I hope the meeting tomorrow can be productive. I will be around tomorrow (I hope) but don't want to get too involved in the debate itself, since it is not a good use of my time. Thanks, - Richard p.s. As for the question why change the venue if it was decided: I purposely stayed out of selection. But I am under the impression that le camp was selected due to the promise of large amounts of sponsorship, early (before now). Since that hasn't come to fruition before contracts need to be signed, it's reasonable to me to reevaluate options. It is very typical for the exact plan to change. -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - pyke: up 6 days, 6:28 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] Budget tradeoffs vs amount of fundraising
On Mon, Nov 05, 2012 at 11:18:20PM +0100, Gaudenz Steinlin wrote: OK I did a bit more than basic math. I have commited my version of the budget to the SVN repository as budget-gaudenz.ods. I made those changes to darst budget: - I added one platinum sponsor as this is now confirmed (also commited to budget-darst.ods) Using our elastic sponsorship evaluations, this doesn't change the overall message of what I've been saying... - I added 5'000 each for bar profits and bed upselling. This is making up numbers based on hopes. It would be nice, but I'd rather not make income out of thin air due to a hope. It doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, it is a very small amount of money, and can be worked out later. I think I could add a section of potential incomes so we won't forget it... - I adjusted the number of professional attendees to 60. The total amount of prof/corp fees is now similar to DC10. See other emails. - Reduced the food costs by 0.8 as this is now agreed with Le Camp (see contract proposal). I already removed the day trip day, which gives 5/6th board = 83%. If le camp lets us do 80% of even that (66% board), it's not reasonable to write in a reduced food cost unless there is actually a plan for where those attendees will actually eat. In all past years, I have gone on full board and known that, *if* the people at the conference manage it well, food will contribute to a surplus at the end. OTOH we currently after 1.5 weeks already have more than half of the total amount raised for DC12. The first bit of money always comes in fast as the hand is held out and sponsors which already know us place money into it... - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - pyke: up 6 days, 9:14 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] Budget tradeoffs vs amount of fundraising [Interlaken]
Hi, This email concerns the idea of another venue (Interlaken) which has lower fixed costs. As stated previously, this should be much more affordable for small amounts of sponsorship. Base assumptions are same as before: - Going in terms of DC12 fundraising, 100% = 60 kCHF. hug and I consider 150% safe and 200% a lot. - 44/2 prof/corp. - Sponsored day trip / conf dinner - 50 CHF per person per day (food + accom) - 50kCHF fixed costs (20 kCH F for venue and 30 kCHF for other things) - [In the descriptions below, I use the same amount of travel sponsorship for each percentage level as my last email, otherwise it is hard to mentally compare.] 100% of DC12: - 120 person weeks (40/80) (vs 45 le camp), about 75 sponsored (vs zero sponsored at lecamp) - no travel sponsorship 150% of DC12: - 225 person-weeks (50/175) (vs 150 person-weeks lecamp). - (no travel sponsorship) 200% of DC12: - 250 person-weeks (50/200) (vs 200 lecamp) - 20 kCHF travel sponsorship 250% of DC12: - 305 person-weeks (75/230) (vs 275 lecamp), - 30 kCHF travel sponsorship 300% of DC12: - Same as lecamp numbers. Commentary: I think this illustrates the main point about having a contract with lower fixed overhead costs. For smaller amounts of money, we can sponsor many more people to attend. By the time it becomes equal, le camp is maxed out. The same will be true anywhere we don't have such a large fixed cost (or with a shorter time). - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - pyke: up 5 days, 19:14 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] Budget tradeoffs vs amount of fundraising
On Fri, Nov 02, 2012 at 05:16:08PM +0100, Holger Levsen wrote: And for this comparison, please redo the comparison based on the DC10 numbers instead. And thanks already! ;-) I'm going to assume people can do basic math, and not be insulted by being asked to do something where there is a much simpler method: DC12: ~ 60 kUSD DC11: 55 kUSD (= 33.5 kEUR at that time, using mid 2001 conversion rate) DC10: 92 kUSD (85 kUSD excluding exclusive local sources) DC9: ~120 kUSD (= 83 kEUR in 2009) I am using USD just since I started with assumption USD=CHF to make things easy, but should have been using EUR. So I was hoping people would realize that 150% of DC12 is about the DC10 amount. This is why 150% we consider safe and 200% is considered a lot. (Using today's rate, 92 kUSD is 86 kCHF) - Richard p.s. One can also notice trends of decreasing sponsorship, despite still needing it (e.g. dc12, dc11 had lots of local sponsorship which isn't accounted for.). Another way we know this isn't just lack of effort is various major sponsors amounts have been declining. -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - pyke: up 2 days, 1 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] Budget tradeoffs vs amount of fundraising
On Thu, Nov 01, 2012 at 07:52:59PM +0100, Gaudenz Steinlin wrote: I think 44 Professionals is a very very conservative expectation. I think we should base our expectations around the numbers we had for DebConfs of similar size (~300 attendees). I also disagree that we have DC10: 65 professional for 40 kUSD. Most other things in the email are opinions and have been discussed well by other people. - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - pyke: up 2 days, 3 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf13 local organization + darst's financial system
On Fri, Nov 02, 2012 at 05:33:05PM +0100, Philipp Hug wrote: I understand this as dc13.ch maintaining a budget, which is obviouly wrong, as I expect those doing this do this together in debconf-team svn^wgit. The detailed budget is maintained in the debconf-team svn and there's a public budget which is less detailed by richard in the debconf-data svn. I still consider it problematic that the official budget is not public, and was not happy at having to redo it for transparency reasons. I'd much rather use yours, and move it to -team (And I'd probably rearrange it some in the sprit of mine to make it easier to find the essence). I'm about to commit an update to mine, if you'd rather use mine, feel free to move everything over to it. Or if you have another idea entirely, chat me. Just for the record, here is my recommended layout of documents: debconf-data/budget.ods - Public. Expected costs and incomes. Updated as we know more, but after a while becomes irrelevant. Has no personally identifying information. has aggregate lines for attendee fees/sponsorship from the two budgets below. debconf-team/attendee-payments.ods - Attendee payment records. Has a line for each attendee that needs to pay, and is filled out with date they actually pay, amount, and how they paid. Occasionally needs syncing from penta (I have scripts). For recommended formats, see DC11-DC12. debconf-team/sponsors.ods - Sponsor payment records. Once a sponsor commits, they get a line here with pledged amount, and when paid, actual amount. For recommended formats, see DC11-DC12. debconf-team/accounting/ledger - Public full accounting of payments and all. Sponsor/attendee payments are listed here without identifying information, and for identifying information one looks in the two charts above. Normal team membres don't need to worry about this format, it is for accountants to use to tabulate everything and ensure it syncs with bank statements. The spreadsheets above provide easier to manage ways to get specific bits of information - and the registration/sponsorship teams can grok them much better than the ledger. + a DC13.ch specific ledger, of hug's choice, since that is important this year. I know there is a desire to make one master document, but I have found this extra level of complexity hasn't actually worked out that well. The system above has worked remarkably well since DC10, and the various teams have all been able to keep up with it. Also, I've never made keeping attendee payments in penta work yet, perhaps someone better than me could. If we replace penta, perhaps then everything would work better. However, might still think having separate and clear boundaries will keep things simple, which is important for long-term sustainability. I'm very happy seeing Phillipp and Richard work together on this the way they do. If thats the dc13 plan (which I believe it is), yay. Right now I am assuming I (+ hug) will focus just on global money movements and actual expenses, instead of dc13.ch specific expenses, and hug will focus on dc13.ch centric records. Of course, we will work together however we need to, and are already doing that. - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - pyke: up 2 days, 3 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
[Debconf-team] Budget trade-offs: one week conference
Hi, After someone's suggestion, here are possibilities for budgets for a one-week DebConf/DebCamp combination. Assumptions: - 2 days DebCamp, 5 days DebConf (thinking the day trip is worth keeping for one day). - No daytrip - Same nightly forfait for le camp, and avg 21 CHF per bed. Localteam has said this is incorrect, but it's close enough for now. - New professional fee is 400 CHF (actual cost for 5 days: around 275 CHF) - Same 44 prof/2 corp attendees. - Otherwise same assumptions as last time. 100% of DC12: - 40 DebCamp attendees, 100 DebConf attendees (46 unsponsored) - 10 kCHF of travel sponsorship. 150% of DC12: - 40 DebCamp attendees, 150 DebConf attendees (46 unsponsored) - 30 kCHF of travel sponsorship 200% of DC12: - 60 DebCamp, 280 DebConf (46 unsponsored) - 30 kCHF travel sponsorship 215% of DC12: - 100 DebCamp, 300 DebConf (46 unsponsored) - 30 kCHF travel sponsorship - This is the original size planned for, so I probably don't need to go above this. Commentary: As you can see, reducing the number of days makes the math work out much, much better, mainly because we aren't paying 30 kCHF for the DebCamp week just to have the camp. Also, by making DebCamp two days, feeding those people costs a lot less (only 68 CHF per person for two days) Another way to achieve this would be to share the camp that week. Also, commentary for the previous email: I assume 46 prof/corp attendees regardless of the number of sponsored attendees. I imagine that having fewer sponsored attendees would lower the number of prof/corp, due to (for example) fewer accompanying, less interest. This sharply reduces the number of attendees on the low end. (On the other hand, if we don't have money to sponsor people, maybe more people would pay to come). - Richard On Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 09:00:48PM -0400, Richard Darst wrote: Base assumptions: - DC12 fundraising at 60 kUSD ~= 60 kCHF. So below, 100% = 60 kCHF. - 44 Professional and 2 corporate, or about 30 kCHF of money from this source. Even this much is not guaranteed [see recent concerns on the lists]. 44 is based on the number of single/double rooms we have to sell. - All options have sponsored day trip / conference dinner. With the large magnitude of monies we are talking about, removing this this doesn't affect very much. Removing this last minute could close ~10 kCHF deficits. - I exclude income based on bed upselling or bar profit, I'm not sure it'll be so much. This is small compared to magnitudes below (~10 kCHF in localteam budget). -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - pyke: up 15:36, 4 users |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] Budget tradeoffs vs amount of fundraising
On Thu, Nov 01, 2012 at 07:40:12AM -0300, David Bremner wrote: Richard Darst r...@zgib.net writes: - All options have sponsored day trip / conference dinner. With the large magnitude of monies we are talking about, removing this this doesn't affect very much. Removing this last minute could close ~10 kCHF deficits. - I exclude income based on bed upselling or bar profit, I'm not sure it'll be so much. This is small compared to magnitudes below (~10 kCHF in localteam budget). I hesitate a bit to comment on this, because I recognize it is tangential to your main point. However, I do think that budgeting a sponsored day trip while budgeting zero travel sponsorship will leave a bad taste in many people's mouths. To put it another way, I'm fine with waiting to see if all the essentials are paid for before considering travel sponsorship, but I don't consider a sponsored day trip to be an essential aspect of DebConf. Agreed. Here's my reasoning. At the no travel sponsorship range, there are 50-100 attendees, costing 2000 for day trip / 2000 for conference dinner. That's just small change, and probably would be chosen to be moved to travel sponsorship anyway. In general (and more of a suggestion for future years than anything), I consider anything less than 10 kCHF (or really 20-30 kCHF) within the uncertainty. It's more important to have a budget that can gracefully expand or contract depending on many details which can vary up to the last minute. So everything in my last emails is very, very, very approximate. - amount of sponsorship - number of attendees - number of paying attendees - any discounts we get - etc... - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - pyke: up 15:46, 4 users |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] reports from Le Camp BSP, part 3: irc meeting(s) on the internet
On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 02:24:01PM +0100, Holger Levsen wrote: If we dont manage to decide in the next 14 days, I personally think that it will be very hard/unrealistic to gather sponsors in 2012 and if we fail to do that, things will definitly become considerably more difficult. At the end of the year there is quite some easy to get money floating around, but one needs to apply for this earlier. Venues shouldn't influence the majority of the sponsorship, should it? But unfortunately it's premature to make any final decision until there is at least one plausible option presented, including among other things a plausible budget. The budgets we had at Le Camp were/are IMO plausibe, have they still not been added to svn? I don't think that's agreed. Any budget which remotely looks close has ZERO travel sponsorship. (and the best budget anyone has produced still have deficits, despite assuming 50% more sponsorship than last year) My last email had a kind-of-fallback plan plan for lecamp, but that involves no attendees. Any plan that kind of makes it work involves huge amounts of sponsorship, or moving a large portion of the costs onto attendees. Since that time, there are lots of doubts raised about getting this many professional attendees. I think it's worth asking if any of these will be affordable, and (more usefully) what tradeoffs we'd have to make at different levels of fundraising: 50% more than last year, 100% more than last year, and so on. Surely one can look for dc13 sponsors now as the situation is Yes -- as has been said, it's late already. And the best way to show that any of the possible Swiss budgets are plausible would be to quickly get some promises of cash from non-repeat sponsors, to demonstrate that we can expect the sponsorship income to be greater than the last few years. we already have 46k secured for Le Camp, quite very probably 51k. Thats way more then ever. (I do actually miss some applause here.) I am guessing that 40 kCHF comes from the anonymous donors. No one has talked about this yet, but this I have gathered that this isn't a donation, this is a loan to be repaid later... not that dissimilar to what Debian provides once we have a reasonable budget. And, while the donors nominally say we can keep it if we need it, what I head said they want it back before _before_ travel sponsorship... so even if we decide to use the money to fill a deficit, it can't be used for travel sponsorship. Also, if these donors feel they misjudged the financial risk of this lending, then it could produce bad blood... - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - pyke: up 36 days, 8:36 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] A better budget analysis
On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 10:06:12PM +0100, Gaudenz Steinlin wrote: In my understanding the professional fee was always intended to cover the per person costs. These include their share of the fixed costs. The numbers darst and hug presented as per person costs are the marginal costs of an additional person per week. While this is a useful number for internal calculations I don't think this is a reasonable basis for any fee. 600 CHF is still quite a bit higher than actual costs (of course, this strongly depends on the number of people). However, historically, professional is bed+food costs for one week, not total_conf_cost / number_of_people. According to current predictions, one person-week costs approx 440 CHF, total_costs/400 person-weeks = 480 CHF. Of course, this goes up the fewer people we have. Here's an interesting historical tidbit: DC12 prof fee was 600 USD (about 600 CHF). Why? Because originally, there was a very expensive venue planned. Once we realized that was not financially viable (Spring 2012), we moved to UCA + some hotels, which we could get a good discount on. Venue changes aren't a sign of failure, or something bad, they are sometimes just what has to be done... - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - pyke: up 36 days, 12:39 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
[Debconf-team] DebConf13 local organization
Hi, A while ago, I talked with some people about the DC13 local organization. There were some interesting things about it, which I thought should be at least mentioned before things go on too far, because otherwise there might be problems later. First off, DC13.ch plans on having all DC13 money go through it. For example, most years, sponsors pay to etiher SPI or FFIS, and then the money is transferred to wherever it is needed, or used in the hempsiphere for travel sponsorship. It allows transfer of money from continent to continent from year to year. The DC13 plan involves having all money go to DC13.ch, wherever it comes from. [Or: not physically moving the money, but acconting it as DC13.ch assets]. This would subject all money to Swiss financial rules. And this is why VAT was such a concern. I had tried to suggest some of the money not go through DC13.ch, but it seems since DC13.ch is defined as running DebConf13, and Debconf13 is a certain event, that gets legally iffy. ~~~ My personal opinion: This isn't ideal, and if I had realized this before I would have encouraged to seek other options first. For example, define the conference as being run by Debian, and DC13.ch handling just certain local money. However, due to legalities, that may not be possible (?). I am not sure what is possible or not, but, at least it's better to know this now, than in six months... - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - pyke: up 36 days, 15:28 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf13 local organization
On Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 01:08:10PM +0100, Daniel Pocock wrote: I had tried to suggest some of the money not go through DC13.ch, but it seems since DC13.ch is defined as running DebConf13, and Debconf13 is a certain event, that gets legally iffy. Maybe, but what if SPI had some money and independently decided to pay travel sponsorship for some people? As that money has no VAT concerns, and if the sponsorship was contemplated actively by the SPI board, there would be no necessity for it to through DC13 would there? That's what I hoped would happen, but local team said wouldn't be possible due to various reasons. I recognize that VAT for things spent within switzerland may be unavoidable [though, part of the hope for a local organization is to be nonprofit to get tax exempt...], but it's the necessity of swiss rules for global money that I want to point out before it becomes a surprise. - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - ehrenfest: up 7 days, 2:26 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
[Debconf-team] Budget tradeoffs vs amount of fundraising
Hi, This email presents different scenarios based on the amount of fundraising accomplished. For each amount of amount of fundraising, I list one option of what we can afford. Of course, money can be shifted around in various ways, but the general magnitudes hold. The goal here is to allow everyone to see the trade-offs, and judge for themselves what is acceptable and likely. Base assumptions: - DC12 fundraising at 60 kUSD ~= 60 kCHF. So below, 100% = 60 kCHF. - 44 Professional and 2 corporate, or about 30 kCHF of money from this source. Even this much is not guaranteed [see recent concerns on the lists]. 44 is based on the number of single/double rooms we have to sell. - All options have sponsored day trip / conference dinner. With the large magnitude of monies we are talking about, removing this this doesn't affect very much. Removing this last minute could close ~10 kCHF deficits. - I exclude income based on bed upselling or bar profit, I'm not sure it'll be so much. This is small compared to magnitudes below (~10 kCHF in localteam budget). 100% of DC12: - We have 45 person-weeks. (zero sponsored attendees). We barely have enough money to pay for food for professional attendees. No travel sponsorship. 150% of DC12: - 50 DebCamp attendees, 100 DebConf attendees (about 100 sponsored person-weeks). Zero travel sponsorship. 200% of DC12: - 50 DebCamp attendees, 150 DebConf attendees. (About 150 sponsored person-weeks). About 20 kCHF travel sponsorship. 250% of DC12: - 75 DebCamp attendees, 200 DebConf attendees. (About 230 sponsored person-weeks). About 30 kCHF travel sponsorship. 250% of DC12, Option 2: - 100 DebCamp attendees, 300 DebConf attendees. (About 355 sponsored person-weeks). No travel sponsorship. - This was the most recent budgets proposed by localteam, 1-2 weeks ago. 300% of DC12: - 100 DebCamp attendees, 300 DebConf attendees. (About 355 sponsored person-weeks). About 30 kCHF travel sponsorship. - This was the original budget of localteam, several months ago, before moderating it to make it a bit more realistic. (This email is different also because it has new estimates of attendee fees). Commentary: This should show things are possible, but not ideal. For the more realistic numbers, we would be undergoing a huge cost, for few attendees and no travel sponsorship. The higher ranges here seem unlikely until proven otherwise. This isn't to say that Interlaken is necessarily better than Interlaken, because both are expensive [though Interlaken will allow more attendees at 100%--250%, due to lower forfait]. If we took the option of renegotiation to make it one week instead of two, these numbers would look much more favorable due to halfving the 63kCHF forfait for reserving the whole camp. So, which of these lines do people think are a) achievable in terms of fundraising and b) a trade-off worth making? If anyone has questions about how this could be adjusted, let me know. My opinions: This is why I have proposed waiting a bit before deciding: time is our friend, and lets us have a better idea about which of these categories we can fall in, and then we can see if that's okay, or want to cost cut more. At least I have reasoned myself out of total fears of bankrupcy, but giving up attendees isn't a much better option... hug and I talked and (I think) we agreed that 150% is safe, 200% would be optimistic. (hug and )I consider(ed) ~100+ professional attendees unrealistic, and even 60-100 is pushing it unless I hear other new information. - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - pyke: up 1:28, 4 users |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
[Debconf-team] A better budget analysis
Hi, This email is from darst (who takes responsibility for most editorial opinions) and hug, about budget things. Le Camp: - ~ 95 kCHF fixed costs, which about matches a safe initial sponsorship estimate. (65 kCHF all accom and 30 kCHF other) - This is with no attendees. Each additional attendee costs ~225/week (due to food only). - Each extra professional registrant, (600 CHF/week), allows 2.6 attendees to come [so 1.6 sponsored attendees] - But these 1.6 sponsored attendee-weeks must also cover DebCamp people - Each extra bronze sponsor allows 9 attendees to come, gold, 50 to come. - This is with NO travel sponsorship at all. - Each 10 kCHF travel sponsorship costs 45 attendee-weeks - There seems very little potential for reducing overhead costs (70 - kCHF lecamp) or per-person (34 CHF/person-day food) - If we get to more than 400 person-weeks, per-person costs go up, - since we must pay more accom. (324 beds total, it is unlikely we'll - get to this much without 100 at DebCamp). Interlaken: - ~50 kCHF of overhead costs (20 kCHF venue + 30 kCHF other) - Each attendee costs about 350/week (since we must pay per-attendee accom) - The savings of overhead allow about 140 attendees to attend. - Each 600 CHF prof attendees allow 1.7 attendees to come. [so .7 sponsored attendees] - Each sponsor... - Each bronze sponsor allows 5.7 attendees to come - Each gold sponsor allows 34 attendees to come - This is also with NO travel sponsorship at all. - Each 10 kCHF travel sponsorship costs 30 attendee-weeks. - Due to all the options and time before commitment, there is a lot of - potential to reduce the costs. Common to both: - We assume 100 kCHF income. This is still quite a lot more than past years, but not totally fanciful. - All person-week things above include DebCamp. So if we can afford 150 person-weeks, that could mean 50 DebCamp and 100 DebConf only. - **NO* travel sponsorship included*! This means this DebConf will exclude many people who can't afford to come. I think this is a problem for both of these options so far... Comparison: - Le Camp and Interlaken cost the same for 360 attendee-weeks. Below this, interlaken is cheaper, above this, lecamp is cheaper - Above 400 person-weeks, we have to pay per-person accom at le camp, so it becomes more expensive. - According to these calcs, we need 133 professionals (at 600 CHF/week) to achieve 360 person-weeks at le camp (or lots of extra sponsorship). So given our likely situation, le camp remains more expensive. Notes: - Interlaken 350/week = CHF25 accomodation (including breakfast) + CHF25 food (lunch+dinner) / day - if we lower to food budget to CHF 20? CHF315/week - Le Camp 225/week includes only food, since most accom would be below forfait (minimum cost). Thanks, - Richard (and hug) -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - pyke: up 35 days, 6:28 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] le camp budget...
On Sun, Oct 28, 2012 at 04:03:57PM +0100, Gaudenz Steinlin wrote: Thanks for your budget. Just two notes: - The minimum price is not per week but for the whole event. So we can use the nights we don't use during DebCamp for DebConf. This significantly reduces the costs. - Our budget calculates with 34.- CHF per meal as Le Camp already agreed to that option. This means a cold buffet (not only sandwiches) for lunch. What I sent considers both of these (corrected from IRC this morning before I sent, along with some other changes of mine...). - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - pyke: up 34 days, 5:18 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] Minutes meeting with Le Camp, Thursday 25-10-2012
On Sat, Oct 27, 2012 at 10:39:09AM +0200, Didier 'OdyX' Raboud wrote: What people don't appear to realize is that we are discussing going there since last November and that the first signs of doubts appeared only in August, _while_nothing_changed_since_then_. I understand the frustration, but... we sort of went from enough time to raise money before committing to not enough time to raise money before committing. Which one could say comes from both not finding sponsors soon enough, and also from the contract being worse than expected (price reductions didn't go as well as we had expected...). This isn't to say the local team has done poorly. Each year teams want to do better and better, which is good, but the reality is (perhaps especially post-late-2000s-recession?), that cutting costs is more feasible than raising money to be fancier. Personally, I think that the bid deciders would be well advised to consider this in the future, since I've seen a similar pattern over and over as long as I've been involved (especially, personally speaking, for DC10). So, please don't see this as a criticism of DC13 work, but as part of what happens every year (unfortunately...). - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - pyke: up 32 days, 12:52 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] not a registration fee, but...
On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 03:39:38PM +0200, Daniel Pocock wrote: However, there is some benefit to advertising such a fee, and then `sponsoring' individuals by waiving the fee for them. The main benefit is that DebConf can ask people to `find their own sponsor' before asking DebConf to `sponsor' them. I'm sure someone has mentioned this before, but... this is roughly what the professional fee is supposed to be. The professional fee was designed for people woh could get it reimbursed somehow, through an employer or so. There have been years when we have encouraged people more strongly to get this sponsored somehow, which is reasonable this year: DebConf is very expensive to put on. In order to ensure it is a success, we encourage everyone to register as a Professional attendee if it can be sponsored by an employer or you have the means to self-pay. This fee is designed to be the actual cost of one person's food and accommodation for one week of DebCamp/DebConf. Of course, 400-500 CHF is a lot for some people to self-pay, while 100 or so may not be that bad. Again, this doesn't have to be made different from what we normally do: If you are unable to afford or get sponsored the Professional fee, you may always register as Sponsored and make a donation to DebConf (via the same mechanisms as Professional payments) of any amount to help cover your costs of attending - may we suggest 100 CHF? As always, this money goes to actual costs of food and accommodation. Anyone is free to arrange their own food and accommodation and attend DebConf as a Category attendee. Really, it's just a framing difference: we point out it is free for all (before the sponsorship deadline) and ask for fees/donations only as people feel they are able to afford. I think this is much more agreeable... since it's what is already common. But remember, even if everyone paid an average of 100 CHF, it doesn't come close to filling the budget gap. - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - pyke: up 28 days, 14:06 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
[Debconf-team] thoughts on Le Camp contract and budget
Hi, I was going to try to prepare something much more detailed, but I'm not having time to do that in a short time. First, debconf always finds a way is what we generally accept, and I think this is true. However, historically, we usually do this by cutting costs (or finding someone to sponsor most of the venue/accom or some such) or removing features. On the other hand, we historically aren't that good at raising unbounded sums of money globally. As past fundraising teams may say (and if I'm wrong I hope they will correct me): once you get to a certain point, there aren't enough more places to ask and get positive replies. What is big each year and often saves us is local sponsors: but historically, this has always been something like a university providing a lot for free, and not simply lots of money. So... that is why people are worried about this year. There is a contract to sign now, before we have established money to pay for it. But more importantly, signing the contract removes the primary way to make things work: the flexibility to move around to a cheaper place to cut costs, negotiate better contracts, and so on. In fact, having a contract means we can't do the usual thing and move to some cheap or free venue. This is in addition to the amount of the contract being an entirely unprecedented amount of money for debconf (in recent history), and in fact far more than debian could save us. I know there are supposed to be plans to raise a lot of money from companies and foundations. However... I don't think we can count on that until we have something more solid. So, above is my general thoughts on the matter of the contract. I could back up most of the things from above with examples from recent years, from dc9 until now. I will soon reply to this with my own recommendations regarding the contract. - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - pyke: up 17 days, 1:34 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] thoughts on Le Camp contract and budget
On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 09:20:47AM -0400, Richard Darst wrote: So, above is my general thoughts on the matter of the contract. I could back up most of the things from above with examples from recent years, from dc9 until now. I will soon reply to this with my own recommendations regarding the contract. So... with the above being said, here are my thoughts: The contract probably shouldn't be signed until there are better guarantees of funding. This doesn't have to be sponsorship acquired, or money in the bank, but at least talking to some of the foundations to make sure we aren't too late, we meet criteria, there is a possibility to get to the range of money we need... Alternatively, we could form a preliminary agreement that doesn't have any deadlines, and le camp recognizes could be walked out on if we needed to. This would understandably not be good from their perspective. And still, we should look at other more flexible options, to keep many paths open so that we can reduce prices later, when we need to. There are of course other things to do, but this is my personal summary (of things that I can think of in a limited time). - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - pyke: up 27 days, 17:54 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] Final call for DebConf13 sponsorship levels and benefits
On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 04:33:38PM +0200, Holger Levsen wrote: [5] It's also possible to use their kitchen and cook our own food. The organizers of RMLL in Geneve this July told us that they were able to hire people to cook for them for 8.- CHF per meal. This would reduce the costs to CHF 24.- / € 20.- per person per day which totals to CHF 70'200 / € 58'000. Going with this option would save us about CHF 46'800 / € 38'700. Such an option which reduces the budget by 46k CHF doesn't sound like an option to me, but rather like a must-have. I remember the talk about not being practical to cook ourselves... I thought that was because we wouldn't have the volunteers to do it. However... I don't recall if someone said we can't hire someone. The situation is actually better than it lists above. 1) We only really need two meals per day (maybe get them to bring some snacks for breakfast. Reduce costs by 1/3rd. 2) Avoid day trip food costs. Reduce costs by ~4800 3) Be able to give estimates and only pay for meals we eat: save a bit. 4) Be able to get cold meals for arrival/departure days. Save a bit. RLMM cook: 16 CHF/day * (300*8 + 100*6) = 48 kCHF ~ 39 k€. minus savings from not paying first/last days Le Camp cook: 120 kCHF ~ 100 k€ full board (8 debconf days) Note: the budget spreadsheet we have been looking at has assumed 7 days for debconf. The RLMM calculations assumed 8 days. The above calcs have been normalized to 8 debconf days/6 debcamp, which includes arrival but not departure date. Both calcs will be reduced some by excluding them or just getting cold meals those days. RLMM cook actual savings: 72 kCHF or 60 k€. Plus, we'll save even more by being able to estimate closer to what we need. This needs serious consideration, even if there are extra overhead costs. Even if there are extra accom costs for not buying their food, it would probably be worth it for only needing two meals per day. Even if this doesn't work, what are the possibilities about getting le camp to include lunch but not breakfast. In fact, perhaps we could even make this be a minimum requirement for using le camp? - Richard [gismo: sorry, I wrote this before your email got sent... everyone else: read gismo's email first] -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - pyke: up 3 days, 19:03 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf 13 legal association
On Fri, Aug 31, 2012 at 08:45:35AM +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: I disagree with this, as I've observed in the past. For one thing, it doesn't seem to me that it is *that* easy to create this association. One argument is that, if it were so, it'd have already existed by now, no? (But if the counter-argument to that is we wanted to have an explicit ack before proceeding, fine.) FWIW, I haven't been too active but I have been paying attention. Local team has well done their due, listened to disadvantages presented, and at least I agree now that an association is a reasonable thing to do. Hopefully other people from the team can weigh in on if that was decided or not. Aside for local team: will you be wanting non-swiss sponsors to pay directly to dc13 organization, or go through SPI/FFIS/other organizations like usual? (... related tax, financial implications...) - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - ramanujan: up 93 days, 19:15 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] Alternative ways of raising money
Hi, Consider targeting of the source: while individuals may not donate a huge amount, perhaps small businesses would make also make (bigger) crowdfunding donations. We have lots of merchandising we have done in the past: umbrellas, swiss army knives (good for this year!), etc. Logistics of shipping will take a _lot_ of work, but if the price is 100+ € per item, it could be worth it: just get a few people in a room at debconf and do all the shipping. We would need a dedicated team to manage it, though. Of course: people can just get these at-cost during the normal merchandising procedures, but crowdfunding is all about psychology. Also, we would do a much broader marketing campaign with the crwdfunding thing. On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 10:41:15AM +0200, Ana Guerrero wrote: Does somebody else have any other ideas besides the crowdfunding and the t-shirt ideas? Another random idea: auctions of silly/trivial items: - Rare shirt from DebConfN. (I would donate DC9+DC10 shirts to this, in fact, this is how I got the idea). - $famous_person's DebConfN shirt (if someone is willing to part with it) - Dinner with DPL (but being an open project, auctioning off a leader's time is sort of questionable. Anyone can talk to our leader and could probably get a dinner with em.) - Seated at leader's / debconf team's table at conference dinner - FTPmaster's socks (thanks anonymous source) - Probably many more. There's some overlap with the above and crowdfunding rewards from above. I'm not sure which would be better, and we could probably do both, but auctions can be a _lot_ more work. And, trading project privileges for money is a big ?, since it's basically purposely making things scarce to raise money. Just some random ideas, - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - pyke: up 128 days, 2:54 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] SVN - GIT migration
On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 05:47:21PM +0200, Gaudenz Steinlin wrote: Hi Richard Darst r...@zgib.net writes: Hi, (a bit late, but...) From the timing I'm not sure if your mail was sent before you read my last mail to this thread [1] or afterwards. Could you please clarify if my mail addresses your concerns or which ones are still an issue with the latest proposal. Probably I didn't read it, as you can tell, I am weeks behind on everything (and will be for another few weeks, I intended to continue not paying attention for longer) If possible I would like to have a decision about the conversion and the proposed repository access procedure during the meeting tonight. It does make it non-bad, but I am not sure about real advantages. However, it makes it more comfortable, so it'll probably happen (meaning: if everyone else wants to, go). One person blocking is worse than not being able to adapt. The most important things there are a yearly addition of someone as moderator and reviewing permissions. I think this each should be expanded to the entire admin team, with each year adding someone to the that team and allowing people to opt out after their time is past. I would be so happy if a DC13 or DC12 person got on admin team. But that is mostly a separate story. The other non-technical meta-organization in your email is also very good. Guidelines for what goes where could maybe be on my new page at http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/Communication and/or perhaps a dedicated VCS page on the wiki explaining for new people how to get and give. - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - pyke: up 128 days, 5:08 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] DC13 Venue constraints
On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 06:55:47PM -0400, Richard Darst wrote: Hi, It would take too long to find the right message(s) to reply to, so I'll put this here. On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 05:18:47PM +0200, Gaudenz Steinlin wrote: (1) The venue only has 325 beds. Several people fear that this might not be enough. Actual data of arrived people in penta shows that the only DebConf with over 325 people present on the same day was DC 7 in Edinburgh. DC 11 just scratched the limit of Le Camp [1]. (2) Alternative accomodation for people to arrange their own accomodation is too far away. Realistically you need a car to get there. I remember for DC10, at first some localteam people wanted to reserve 400 rooms because it would be huge and DC7 had 400 people. But I looked at the detailed breakdown and it wasn't so big actually, even though 391 people had arrived according to penta, the day with the most people (according to penta) had only around 250 people. (I think) I eventually convinced people to reserve only 300, and we still had less than 200 used any given day. I just went and found that old script (I would have had it in my standard dumps, but the God table I join with only exists for the current debconf so I didn't extend to old years). Here's the data: http://rkd.zgib.net/http/debconf/historical-room-statistics.txt There is an update. I realized the previous numbers only included people who had both an arrival and departure date. For peolpe in accom, that's probably pretty accurate, but for other people, they may not have dates. There are now these extra numbers at the top of each conf: 110 missing dates 0 missing dates attending debcamp 1 missing dates wanting rooms 0 missing dates attending debcamp wanting rooms (two of those lines were there before, but didn't work). So, for this conference (dc7), it's possible that up to 111 extra people could have been there on any given day. But of course, it's unlikely all of these people attended every day. So, if you add the people without dates, max people per day much better approximates number total attendees. So if you assume that everyone without dates was there on the peak days, this may cancel out some of what I had said previously. Of course, I bet most of those people actually weren't there every day. However, everything in that table *is* limited to arrived=true people, so... summary: there may be more people than I thought, but remoteness from cities is still a significant factor. I'm not entirely sure that 325 beds is the most important limit. (The scripts at debconf-data.alioth.debian.org are more modern versions and handled cases like this). Sometimes I wish I could go to a debconf just to get accurate data about attendees, food, rooms, money, just to help us for future years. - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1120 days, 5:17 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] DC13 Venue constraints
On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 12:10:31PM +0200, Gaudenz Steinlin wrote: Hi Thanks to Richard for the detailed breakdown of attendee statistics. Richard Darst r...@zgib.net writes: I remember for DC10, at first some localteam people wanted to reserve 400 rooms because it would be huge and DC7 had 400 people. But I looked at the detailed breakdown and it wasn't so big actually, even though 391 people had arrived according to penta, the day with the most people (according to penta) had only around 250 people. (I think) I eventually convinced people to reserve only 300, and we still had less than 200 used any given day. I just went and found that old script (I would have had it in my standard dumps, but the God table I join with only exists for the current debconf so I didn't extend to old years). Here's the data: http://rkd.zgib.net/http/debconf/historical-room-statistics.txt for every debconf, it lists number of people requesting accom, and total number of people in parentheses, per day. You can compare to total attendees at the top. do I understand this correct, that the number is paranthesis are all the participants, including those who arranged their own accomodation? Exactly. Some effects I can think of: - biggest conference per total attendees is still dc7, but it isn't that much bigger on any given day. This means lots of people came out for just a subset of days, non-overlapping. (implication: dc13 needs fewer beds than expected) - The conferences that have more appealing surrounding city (7, 10) have a smaller proportion of people in accom. (implication: dc13 needs more beds, counterbalancing the above) - it could be the dc13 attendees won't be as high as expected because if it's more remote, fewer people will come out for just a few days. Alternatively, if that isn't the case, it means the population won't be so high as expected based on the big-city debconfs. Basically, my main point is people should think not only in terms of total conference sizes, but per-day attendees, and how that affects things. I don't know the solution, and I don't have time or desire to debate the finer points, so I'll leave it to you all to see. Or another calculation attempt: I think our estimations should be based on the actual attendee count and not on those requesting accomodation. I expect the percentage of people arrangeing their own accomodation to be about 10%. capacity of DC13 (326 + 10%): 358 max attendants on a single day at DC7: 267 difference: 91 (= 34% of 267) What I want to say with this is even if we have 34% more attendees than DC7 or the DC7 numbers are wrong by up to 34% we still have enough beds at Le Camp. I know this is a bit theoretical and has many if's. But this calculation makes the issue much less pressing than it seemed to me before. Remember my update: there were about 100 more people who arrived who were missing at least one date, which means they aren't included in those numbers. You should ask people who were around then if they came for just a day or multiple days. Also, these may be the kind of people who go just because it's convenient, but wouldn't come out and use our accom if using our accom was basically required. I wish I had better answers... but all I can say is that my intuition is the bed shortage isn't as bad as it seems, and can be managed with some work. But it's a choice to make. - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1120 days, 11:33 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] SVN - GIT migration
Hi, (a bit late, but...) On Sat, Jul 07, 2012 at 01:49:10PM -0600, Gaudenz Steinlin wrote: [git conversion things] I have talked to Moray about this, and we both basically agree (but the words here are mine)... but it seems the main advantage to git is that it is cool, not that it's better for this case. First and foremost is the institutional memory. If you want to work on DebConf N, you're going to want to know about DebConf N-1 and N-2 and N-3 and so on. As a specific example, I imagine DC13 people are going to be interested in getting sponsors now. The DC12 and DC11 and so on repos will be good for that - depending on how hard you scrape, you may want all of them. So... that means continuing to give people access to old repos, nullifying the security here? Or go and copy over previous years to the current repo each time? git is good for code. It has tons of nice features like branching and local copies. But I have always thought that subversion is fairly ideal for our use case. One of the complains is size of the repos. Imagine what it's like when you need full history of all changes of all of our binary files, instead of just the current version. Subversion handles this nicely. Also, with subversion you can do partial checkouts. It is one of the first things I figured out when I had to use subversion for debconf-data: $ svn co --depth=immediates svn+ssh://svn.debian.org/svn/debconf-data/ $ cd debconf-data $ cd dc12 $ svn co --depth=full dc12 $ # Hm, I want to check one file in dc11? $ cd ../dc11 $ svn co --depth=immediates Really, exactly how I hope DebConf repos would behave. git does nice branching and local copies... but most of our data is designed to reflect the real world case where there is only one version of facts, and everyone should have that as much as possible. I agree and empathize with the fact it is hard to get people access. I would suggest cc'ing debconf-team on requests to add people as commiters. It is also one of the reasons I try so hard to minimize the amount of private date put into debconf-team, and maximize the public part in debconf-data. (If you'd like to find new people for the admin team, I think it would be very well appreciated!) There are with respect to private data being in the repositories. While I've said this in IRC, private data should only be put in if the need for sharing makes long-term storage worth it. This is the case for most things historically put into it. Perhaps, if people wanted a split, a more logical one would be a repository for just the registration team/travel sponsorship, since they are the ones with all of the attendee information. Note that none of this applies to code, such as pentabarf, etc. I realize that I am doing a lot of talking here, and not much doing. I feel pretty dirty telling others that their work isn't appreciated. However, nonetheless, every year I see tons of people come into DebConf with great idealism about technology, who eventually seeing that putting on a DebConf is about managing complexity and finding a nice balance. I wish that I could do more, but I am currently trying to finish my degree so I have very limited time. In 2-3 months, I will have much more time and can take a more active role in things, perhaps by writing up various best practices (make a list for me!). I'm sure there has been much discussion at debconf itself, and if you all would like to go ahead, I'll wish you the best of luck and do what I can with the new system. - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1097 days, 19:18 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] Budget status - travel sponsorship)
Hi, On Thu, Jul 05, 2012 at 12:40:06AM +0100, MJ Ray wrote: Richard Darst r...@zgib.net It is hard to improve things. The order we spend money is: venue rental, accom, food, a few other nice things, travel. If travel is prioritized low, and we always are short of money, travel will keep being last. I'm not sure that's quite right. Debconf might allocate the money in that order, but I suspect it's often actually spent in an order closer to venue rental deposit, travel, accom, a few other nice things, food, rest of the venue rental. So the most stress is on travel, Yes, if you consider when attendees spend money on travel, not us. As you know, we reimburse travel after the conference. In practice, depending on the year, there can be more of the food/venue/accom that we can pay after the fact, but that's irrelevant to the fact at hand. Richard suggests the debian project guaranteeing X travel sponsorship early in the cycle. There are at least two more ways around this, including: - the project guarantees those later known-size expenses for everything after accommodation, so debconf can use that money to fund the cashflow for travel sponsorship. This difference is that the project is just underwriting core conference costs and doesn't look as much like a sponsor, so shouldn't discourage any real sponsors. - each debconf funds the following debconf's travel. To cover the changeover, the project would need to raise one debconf's travel (maybe for about the same amount as this year's travel, say 20k?) as a sort of seed/transition fund, on the understanding that the final debconf's surplus will be paid back to the project; There is a surplus after each DebConf, that could be used for future travel sponsorship. But like I tried to say before, the DebConf team is very adverse to the possibility of ending up with a deficit (We don't want to give travel sponsorship and have nothing for people to show up to, which could be solved by asking Debian for lots of money, but the team really really wouldn't want to do that). So, most critical DebConf expenses are allocated first each year, as opposed to those which would be most useful to pay first. As I said, I think the difference is people need to make a conscious decision that more risk of a deficit is an acceptable trade-off for allocating (not necessarily spending) money sooner. If one watches carefully enough, they can see a wide range of slightly contradictory statements about wanting to take that risk or not. As an aside, cash flow or liquidity isn't usually a problem. We could borrow from Debian. And, as I said in my other latest message, we pay most travel after the conf. The issue is priorities, not money so much. The two options above are different only in bookkeeping that does not matter so much in the big picture... - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1080 days, 8:21 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] On site communication
On Sun, Jul 01, 2012 at 09:58:02PM -0600, Felix Delattre wrote: Dear team, we have the impression that communication and the proper coordination of local and global team has to improve a lot. We have observed people satireI wonder if it has to do with the fact we abolished the global team, instead we just ask the DebConf chairs everything. Probably no meeting is needed, just ask the chairs how to solve it, they will know./satire - richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1077 days, 3:16 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] budget status (was: Re: Status on Brandts Hotel)
On Sat, Jun 30, 2012 at 04:19:17AM -0400, Richard Darst wrote: 19:07 darst dc12_net = -21k$ + 3-5k$(more attendee fees?) + food_cost_savings + other costs_inaccuracies So, this is embarrasing, but there was a long-standing error in the budget spreadsheet (not summing everything; I never made structural changes in that part of the sheet so I never noticed), missing out on attendee fees professional fees. But some other costs have gone up a tiny bit, too, but overall, it is much better. Thanks to Henning for fixing this. So now we are at dc12_net = -8k$ + 3-5k$(more attendee fees?) + food_cost_savings + other costs_inaccuracies dc12_net = dc12_income - dc12_expenses. So dc12_net=0 would be cost-neutral and all dc11 surplus would be available for dc13. dc12_net does *not* include the dc11 surplus of about 25 kUSD. The meaning of the dc12 surplus is that we *really* don't want dc12_net to be less than -25 kUSD. surplus_for_dc13 = dc12_net (which is negative, remember) + 25 kUSD New commentary: doing good to end up not using much surplus if all the other cost savings come true. Considering dc12 surplus, we have a nice buffer. Still, all cost-cutting practical will help the future. - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1077 days, 3:59 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] Monday's team meeting
On Mon, Jul 02, 2012 at 08:35:11PM -0600, Henning Sprang wrote: - $10,000 already here for hotels It's invoiced to SPI - but not yet in the ISIC bank account, and I don't know if and when the transfer has been started. Anybody? If you look SPI deposited 17054.50 into ISIC, arrived 25 June. This is the sum (plus 50cents) of invoices 6-00010 in debconf-team/accounting/localteam/invoices, which includes 10 kUSD for hotels. - richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1077 days, 23:34 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
[Debconf-team] money stuff
Hi, So, given the recent difficulties in managing money stuff, let me try to clairfy some things. Right now, every money request is bounced around and around, or asking the debconf chairs like they are the Epic Know It Alls, where in reality knowledge comes from working together. First off, the budget should be public. We should have had it discussed at meetings and agreed as reasonable. Then, these things can be dealt with reasonably fast. It would hopefully have small flex for other stuff. Then, actual money disbursements can be handled by those people that actually control bank authorizations (which is different for each of the accounts). Here is a quick copy-and-paste from budget-estimate.ods. It may be being updated. Venue rental -$11,519.34 Hacklabs 2,063.34 Server room 0.00 Auditoriums 9,456.00 Food (150p.) -$18,417.62 Food 3056 1 5.5 16,808.00 Coffee170 lbs 698.88 Coffeemakers 4 91.8367.26 Reusable cups 2501 2.1739130435 543.48 Internet -$3,565.00 Yota ISP fiber 100Mb-3,565.00 Other costs-$13,193.50 Equipment Infrastructure 3,000.00 Local travel costs 1,000.00 Day trip 3,000.00 Conference dinner 2,100.00 T-shirts2,044.00 Banners 310.50 Bags 1,087.00 Stationery 652.00 I would propose when budget-estitmate is updated, it be sent to -team, and, combined with all the other info, we agree that it is reasonable and approved. (Note that a lot of these things are already approved). - richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1076 days, 22:17 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
[Debconf-team] budget status (was: Re: Status on Brandts Hotel)
On Fri, Jun 29, 2012 at 08:13:22PM -0400, Richard Darst wrote: agreed. see last budget thing in irc... (search surplus our net) but let's try to cut costs wherever we can. we are deep into the dc11 surplus. maybe negotiate flexibility? 10k or 5k more would require thought... Here is what I found from IRC: 19:07 darst dc12_net = -21k$ + 3-5k$(more attendee fees?) + food_cost_savings + other costs_inaccuracies dc12_net = dc12_income - dc12_expenses. So dc12_net=0 would be cost-neutral and all dc11 surplus would be available for dc13. dc12_net does *not* include the dc11 surplus of about 25 kUSD. The meaning of the dc12 surplus is that we *really* don't want dc12_net to be less than -25 kUSD. surplus_for_dc13 = dc12_net (which is negative, remember) + 25 kUSD This is using all costs in budget-estimate.ods. This is actual costs for seminole, and the previously predicted costs from brandts. If the new hotel plan costs 2.4 kUSD more, subtract that from dc12_net also. As you can see, we are using up most of the surplus. We still have enough room to increase hotel costs a little bit. *BUT* as I have said before, historically those extra savings add up a _lot_, far more than one would expect. This is the way most past conf surpluses happened, *not* by spending less than is available. Still, everyone should be in full-on penny-pinching mode. a) Try to reduce food costs as much as possible via good application of a meal ticket system. b) try to negotiate with hotels to be able to reduce costs from things like people not showing up or leaving early (big one! maybe booking extra seminole rooms will provide a chance to negotiate better terms). c) Registration team, try to collect the attendee fees I emailed you about (about five people who slipped through the cracks, sponsored but not asked to pay - this is on top of the amount listed above). d) I heard some merchandising ideas, but that's probably more trouble than it's worth e) good old fashioned reducing amenities we can't afford - depending on what you all think is called for. I would try to keep producing updated budget estimates, but it's hard to get good data to base that on. Good recordkeeping is where it's at. Let me know if you have any questions or I can help anyhow. - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1075 days, 4:48 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
[Debconf-team] keeping track of food (was: Re: budget status (was: Re: Status on Brandts Hotel))
On Sat, Jun 30, 2012 at 04:19:17AM -0400, Richard Darst wrote: Still, everyone should be in full-on penny-pinching mode. a) Try to reduce food costs as much as possible via good application of a meal ticket system. It would be amazing if this could happen: today, someone goes and copies onto the wiki number of expected meals based on current attendees: only-reconfirmed/food-by-date.txt, or whatever it is people are using. Try to separate this by paid by us (sponsored + professional) and paid by attendees themselves. Then, each day, add to the wiki: number of meal tickets given out. Number of meal tickets people pay for. Then, we can compare these two values after the conference, and see the fraction of meals we actually use. Food costs are one of the hardest things to predict, and having good records would be amazing for future planning. - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1075 days, 5:19 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
[Debconf-team] front desk related documents (ledger/food ticket sales)
Hi, I have made some documents which could be useful to the front desk. I expect people on site will want to change both of them before using them, since The first is a daily ledger, to use to keep track of all money that goes into and out of the front desk cash box. It's designed to have one per day, that we will reconcile each day. http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debconf-data/dc12/misc/FrontDeskLedger.odt?revision=3530view=co The second is a sheet that can be use to track meal ticket sales. You all probably will want to change this, since I'm not really sure what is practical or not. It has some instructions on it, but I worry it may be too complicated. For example, now that I think about it, you might want a separate cash pile to make food ticket change out of, so that you minimize the risk of getting the front desk cash box amount wrong in all the madness of rapid ticket sales. http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debconf-data/dc12/misc/FoodTicketSales.odt?revision=3532view=co Anyway, these are just to get something started, to encourage better tracking this year than past years. Henning is the on-site accountant and can work to make the actual procedures. Thanks, - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1075 days, 16:46 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf travel sponsorship (was: Re: Budget status - travel sponsorship)
On Fri, Jun 29, 2012 at 05:45:53PM +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote: On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 03:35:20AM -0400, Richard Darst wrote: [debconf-surplus] For readers of -project, here's what this means: Sponsors slowly pledge money over the spring, and we usually are in a panic about oh no, we have no money to afford anything. But as time goes on, things get together. We get a few more sponsors. We find local supporters who will sponsor things locally, or negotiate better discounts, or find cheaper venues. A major source of extra money is when many people don't reconfirm, or don't show up, saving us a lot on accommodation costs. It's probably not unreasonable to wonder why many people do not reconfirm. Is it because they don't know yet whether they'll be sponsored? If that's the case, then you're now basically saying most of the money we'll be using to ensure no sponsored attendee will cancel is coming from the sponsored attendees who cancel; that logic is somewhat flawed. Well... Food+accom sponsorship is decided early, I think around the beginning of June this year. It is generally pretty easy to get - unless you are not related to free software, you'll get it. There is really no significant uncertainty about this. Travel sponsorship is harder to get, and that is what was very last-minute this year. But the team is aware of that, and keeps track of who hasn't reconfirmed and is waiting for it, who might be able to reconfirm if they got it. However, the thing about getting lots of extra money from people who don't reconfirm is from accom-sponsored-people. These people sign up when registration starts (because you got to sign up when it's offered, even if you aren't sure then), but end up not being able to come for reasons unrelated to debconf. While it would be good if they would communicate this earlier, the final deadline for letting us know is the reconfirmation deadline - by not reconfirming. There are ~10-15-20 people each year like this, and *each* person who doesn't reconfirm basically gives us the professional fee back, which is big. So, yes, there are all sorts of race conditions in this process that are *not* fun to deal with, but not exactly what you say. And for travel sponsorship (the issue at hand), the number is small and can get personal attention. And things could be improved. But it takes volunteers to do that, who have enough time early enough, *and* knowledge of what to avoid. - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1075 days, 17:26 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] budget status (was: Re: Status on Brandts Hotel)
On Sat, Jun 30, 2012 at 02:33:09PM -0600, Henning Sprang wrote: On Sat, Jun 30, 2012 at 2:19 AM, Richard Darst r...@zgib.net wrote: b) try to negotiate with hotels to be able to reduce costs from things like people not showing up or leaving early (big one! maybe booking extra seminole rooms will provide a chance to negotiate better terms). Sadly, the hotel conditions are pretty hard. Canceling is only possible 5 days in advance(!) as far as I understood the contracts that I saw... Yes, but if you can renegotiate with the promise of more rooms... But, another, perhaps easier to do idea: if people don't show up, see if you can resell those rooms to other people that want a place to stay? I realize this will take a significant amount of work... - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1075 days, 20:07 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] front desk related documents (ledger/food ticket sales)
On Sat, Jun 30, 2012 at 05:02:47PM -0600, Henning Sprang wrote: On Sat, Jun 30, 2012 at 2:03 PM, Richard Darst r...@zgib.net wrote: Anyway, these are just to get something started, to encourage better tracking this year than past years. Henning is the on-site accountant and can work to make the actual procedures. Thanks for the helpful forms so far! I wonder about making one more form for collecting reimbursement data to fulfil the needs of information stated in [[Accounting]] - for reimbursement requests that will be paid via Banktransfer(if that happens - will it?!) we will also want to add account information and contact data. About to have to run, but... to get money out of FFIS, you have this http://www.ffis.de/Verein/Reimbursement.ps SPI has a similar form http://www.spi-inc.org/treasurer/SPI_reimbursement_request.pdf and those are *only* to get money out of their bank accounts. ISIC may have its own. DebConf doesn't have it's own form, as it's not a legal entity itself. Perhaps you could make one. Perhaps you could use that of ISIC. If the debconf cash isn't being counted as the assets/income of any legal entiety, then perhaps it won't need forms. I am not one to want extra paperwork that isn't needed. You all should discuss. About the info requested in [[Accounting]], I would just be as low key as possible. It is designed to just be what is needed to classify things in ledger, and to keep things as un-bureaucratic as possible. So, I might recommend people just send you the info from [[Accounting]] first, and they tell you how they want to be reimbursed, then you point them to the proper form (or no form, if that's possible). Plus as stated in IRC, any expense above some amount(which exactly, is the question to the chairs) must be authorized by someone(who exactly?) and that should be recorded, e.g. by signature. ... off to do that, suggestions welcome... I would say, there should be a meeting where authorization of purchases of different types are delegated to various people, probably local + global people. It would make sense to have Henning be an authorize of small things. - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1075 days, 20:12 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] Status on Brandts Hotel
On Jun 29, 2012 7:48 PM, Holger Levsen hol...@layer-acht.org wrote: Querido Don Leito, muchas gracias for the hotel status update! On Freitag, 29. Juni 2012, Leandro Gómez wrote: The difference in costs is ~USD2400 more for switching to Seminole. I think this is annoying but bearable. agreed. see last budget thing in irc... (search surplus our net) but let's try to cut costs wherever we can. we are deep into the dc11 surplus. maybe negotiate flexibility? 10k or 5k more would require thought... Thank you and everybody involved for resolving this! locals, remember, stuff going wrong is very normal, but not knowing what is going on leads to the problems. this update is good@ cheers con un beso, Holger ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
[Debconf-team] Accnting for everything on site and during the conf
Hi, DebConf is about to start, so there is about to be a lot of money movement. This is the yearly email about try to keep records of money. This is normally done very poorly most years, so please remember to make a conscious effort. For each transaction, what we need to know is: - Date - Description / what it's for - Amount and currency - Who it is from and who it is to. (example: to: the ISP. from: my bank account) Email this to account...@debconf.org. This goes to Me, Norman, and Henning. They will be the primary ones keeping things up, I will help where possible and make final reports. Examples of cases to be included: - You bought something and need to be reimbursed. - An invoice is paid. - Someone is paying debconf in cash on-site. - Any other cash transactions. - Money is transferred overseas. - We are using your bank account to transfer money, and you got a deposit, you spent something, and so on. - Anything involving money! - Anything in the past involving money that we don't know about. If it works better, feel free to batch the transactions when mailing them (for example, front desk stuff), but generally too many emails is not a problem, forgetting things is. Further information can be found at http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/Accounting, and the big box at the top will be kept updated with what you can do to help. If there are any questions, please let me know. - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1071 days, 2:58 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
[Debconf-team] Current/live balance sheet
Hi, The accounting team has gone and updated all of our records, and the following file is accurate as of what we know now (all FFIS stuff, all ISIC stuff): http://debconf-data.alioth.debian.org/stats/accounting-balances.txt It should be kept up to date in real time (updated every hour + when I svn up on my computer). This is only as good as our records: when you spend money, or know of other transactions, let us know, and we'll keep it up to date! - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1072 days, 1:11 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf travel sponsorship (was: Re: Budget status - travel sponsorship)
Hi, On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 03:35:20AM -0400, Richard Darst wrote: [Travel sponsorship idea where Debian underwrites travel sponsorship, allowing it to be allocated earlier, with DebConf eventually bearing the total cost.] So, the idea seems to have support, which is good. As people point out, one of the biggest factors is getting people to actually _do_ something eight months from now. I think key to making that happen is to formulate somewhat of a concrete plan during this DebConf, since, if history is any indication, once next year comes around, there will be bigger problems. Thus, I encourage Debian and DebConf representatives to discuss the parameters of this underwriting (I won't be there, so someone needs to bring this up, probably at some BOF - I see a DebConf travel sponsorship BOF already submitted, as well as a general DebConf BOF). Next is quantifying the amount of money and risk Debian (or DebConf) is willing to bear. Historical travel sponsorship costs were listed in my previous message. Of course, the exact situation depends on that DebConf's financial situation at the time. Getting money approved early is independent (mostly) from working on other problems in the travel sponsorship process, so one shouldn't depend on the other. So, in summary, given that everyone seems to abstractly like the idea, I can't think of a lot I can do now. Most important is to have it on the radar for discussion at DebConf12, so that it won't be missed due to lack of time at DebConf13. If anyone has any logistical questions about how to do this, ping me and I'll answer those questions. - Richard p.s. Ideas similar to this have been said many times before, apologies to anyone I didn't cite as having it before me. -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1067 days, 4:26 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
[Debconf-team] DebConf travel sponsorship (was: Re: Budget status - travel sponsorship)
, then Debian should be part of DebConf. If people are interested, I can research more details and present a better report on the practicality of this scheme, and of course, to help make it so next year. - Richard [debconf-surplus] For readers of -project, here's what this means: Sponsors slowly pledge money over the spring, and we usually are in a panic about oh no, we have no money to afford anything. But as time goes on, things get together. We get a few more sponsors. We find local supporters who will sponsor things locally, or negotiate better discounts, or find cheaper venues. A major source of extra money is when many people don't reconfirm, or don't show up, saving us a lot on accommodation costs. Thus, we always seem to have much more of a surplus than we were expecting, which is what makes the plan above more reasonable than it seems at first. [accounting-details] Probably, DebConf would pay most of the people itself. The exact flow of money doesn't matter as long as it is all properly accounted for. Which we can do. Or at least, I will do. [debian-money] Yes, Debian recently embarked on an expensive hardware replacement plan, and can't go spending things left and right. It is just a matter of priorities. [travel-system] I'm not going into details about all the ways the current travel system has problems. Hopefully others can chime in if people have questions. Also, there are fundamental questions about how to do the actual allocations, which would remain regardless. Maybe new blood can kick-start a discussion on it. There are notes here http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/TravelSponsorship and references to notes from a BOF at the very bottom of that page, under References. In the DC10 Travel Sponsorship BOF thread, Pablo mentions something similar. -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1065 days, 3:15 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf travel sponsorship
On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 09:55:17AM +0200, Giacomo Catenazzi wrote: I think we should write a detailed page on wiki (with requirement, what we things are the criteria to ask for sponsorship and so on...), and provide a email interface (ticket system or a private mailing list), so that people should read instruction and be more verbose on why they ask sponsorship. This is true, and could be tried. Phil Hands is a good one to talk to about this. Other people in the past have tried to work up similar schemes. However, the allocation procedure is a bit tangential to this thread. *I think we should keep this thread to money issues, and a later thread can discuss how to evaluate people.* ( Otherwise, we'll get distracted, not have money early, so once we get around to we have money to allocate, it is so late, and we are so rushed we just use the old system. Yes, that's about the status quo. (Of course, if DC13 has oodles of money very early on, it's a different situation, but then you really will have no problems.) ) - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1065 days, 5:51 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] questions for hotel people (+and note about travel money)
On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 04:49:52PM -0600, Felix Delattre wrote: Government told us today that they have approved to sponsor for everyone accommodation during DebCamp in their Hotels of choice (Seminole and Holiday Inn), which are nice hotels, but not the cheapest ones. We have to pay accommodation during DebConf, but we are free to move the people to other (cheaper) hotels. We have to get real prices from the hotels now to decide the most convenient option for us (and our budget). This is a sponsorship of around 10K to 13K... so let's be happy :) And means that the other things (transportation, welcome room in the airport, palace of culture for conference dinner, etc...) seems to happen somehow. From IRC, my calculations were: Savings of about 10 k$ for DebCamp costs. If we used the gov hotels for debconf itself, and they costed more than 42 $/person/night (our current hotels are ~28 $/person/night), then this deal would end up costing us more than it saved. Since those hotels are probably more expensive than that, we will probably end up having to move people between camp and conf, to save us 10 k$, which is significant. Other budget notes from this: This just about makes up all the missing budget amount. Once we remove excess please select one and basic people from the budget, that saves us about 4 k$, which gives us nice pocket change for misc costs. So what this means is that basically, all our travel sponsorship is coming straight from the surplus. Spending 18 k$ of the 25 k$ surplus for travel sponsorship seems reasonable and fiscally responsible. Given other cost reductions, we could still expect a surplus for dc13 of 10-30 k$ once it as all done. So at this point I'm not recommending any more budget for travel sponsorship, unless you'd like to decrease our surplus more. I will write a full analysis tomorrow. Reg team should have updates on attendees by then, and local team will have updates on hotels, so it'll probably be the best budget estimate yet. Also, I really don't want to be awake right now. - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1064 days, 2:02 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
[Debconf-team] Budget status - travel sponsorship
Hi, Our current budget: Extra income: - ?? k$ Natural cost reductions. No one can predict this, but we usually spend less than we budget. - 4 k$ (or 9k$ if they pay the prof fee) from attendees in --please select one-- and unsponsored accom, but requesting accom. I don't think any effort has been made to learn these people's attention. If they don't want to pay (or don't become sponsored), it reduces our accom costs IF we figure it out on time. About 15 people in this category - 5 k$ from people not reconfirming (saved costs on accom). Right now we are about 30 people reconfirmed (pro, corp, spons) under what is in the budget. Of course, we can expect a rush the last day. - ?? k$ unclaimed travel sponsorship. Since it is so close to debconf, some people who get approved won't be able to come. Things we need to spend money on: - 5 k$ misc stuff (though likely less, budgeteers did well at putting in misc expenses - 5-9 k$ for Accom sponsorship. This is the biggest variable. I don't know the exact cost structure of the hotels, and the number of people who reconfirm is highly, highly variable. The more exact we can be, the less it will cost. If we only pay for when people are actually present, instead of what we reserve, it will be less. 10 people for 7 days is about 3 k$. - 10k$ -- 20k$ government support. I said 20k$ before, but as my other email said, this is variable depending on the discount from the hotels we get. - 25k$ DC11 surplus. Remember, every year we try to about balance things, and we always get a fairly nice surplus. This is mostly due to accom-related things. If I had to guess, I would say that reconfirmation/accom savings and other natural cost reductions are about on the same order. Any gov support would go into extra money for travel sponsorship. Travel Sponsorship == My instinct is: - If you want to go low and conservative, 10 k$ for travel sponsorship. - If you want to go reasonable, 15 k$ is a fiscally responsible amount for travel sponsorship. - Travel team sort of implied 18k$ would fund everyone they thought should get money. My personal recommendation would be to allocate 15-18 k$, depending on where the team finds the natural cutoff. This will use some of the surplus, but I am almost sure not as much as we think. These are extremely small amounts compared to other years: 40k$ dc11, 25-30k$ dc9 and dc10. Yes, even 10k is more than we have available, but I have done this enough I know that I could massage the accommodation numbers down by trying to include the variables above, but really, it's my intuition from past years making these judgments. I don't have time to beat down penta until it give me accom numbers I want. - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1060 days, 5:17 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
[Debconf-team] questions for hotel people
Hi, I was about to go to sleep and realized we *needed* to get some questions asked: - When do we need to know the number of rooms we are using? How many are reserved now? How flexible are they? - What is the cost structure? In particular, what about canceling rooms at the last minute? - In the budget right now, there are different costs for different hotels. Are we using them in the order cheapest to most expensive, so that the more expensive rooms get canceled first, and if we have more rooms, it is the highest price listed? (28$/night, 38$/night, 58$/night.) Are the $58/night special accom? - Will we be able to add more rooms if they are available? - Will we need to assign them or will they? I know that you still don't know which hotels we are using, and if the gov is paying. That just means you should make your best guess at _both_ of these possibilities (it's OK if you don't know for sure, I know how it changes). The reg team can't work until they know what limitations they have and what they need to get done. Everyone else, any other questions? - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1060 days, 6:37 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] Travel sponsorship money (and other money things)
On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 12:42:31PM -0400, Richard Darst wrote: - Government support (about 20 k$) (still waiting. For now, let's plan on not having it and be happy when it does.) I heard last night that here is how this works. With gov support: We switch to different hotels that the gov co-owns. These hotels are more expensive, but we will get a discount, *and* the gov will pay 50% of the reduced price. The list price of the hotels is less than about twice what we are paying now, so this _should_ be a good deal for us. However, it might not be the 20k$ benefit I assumed. Anyone else with more information about the budget, please update the budget, or if it is an uncertainty, reply to this message. I'll send out another status tonight. - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1059 days, 18:37 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
[Debconf-team] Professional attendees
Hi, In past years, before registering accommodations, we would ask professional attendees to finalize their payments. Of course, some people couldn't before then, but if we knew them and they said they would pay eventually, we'd trust that. Other people could be handled case-by-case. - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1057 days, 13:18 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
[Debconf-team] Travel sponsorship money (and other money things)
Hi, Money we still need: - Miscellaneous expenses (5 k$) - Accommodation sponsorship: about 5-10 k$ - Travel sponsorship: about 30-40 k$ Sources of money are (we will use money from top to bottom, but bottom ones generally become confirmed first): - Reducing number of attendees (will naturally occur at reconfirmation). - Increasing professional attendees numbers. - Reducing costs (naturally occurring). (above this point is likely enough to pay for all accommodation) - Government support (about 20 k$) (still waiting. For now, let's plan on not having it and be happy when it does.) - DebConf11 surplus (about 25 k$) - Debian guarentees (10 k$) We *do* have enough for accom sponsorship, I think. We haven't talked about travel sponsorship yet, or identified where that money will come from. I think that it is reasonable to ask for DC11 surplus to be able to send out travel sponsorship confirmations (and then hopefully not use that surplus). What do you all think? Travel sponsorship team, how much would you like to request? - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1057 days, 13:23 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] Travel sponsorship money (and other money things)
On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 12:42:31PM -0400, Richard Darst wrote: Hi, Money we still need: - Miscellaneous expenses (5 k$) Actually, probably most of these would be covered already in the budget. - Accommodation sponsorship: about 5-10 k$ - Travel sponsorship: about 30-40 k$ Travel sponsorship: - 15k$ gets most people who have good ratings remarks (which I assume would be around a good cutoff point, but it's up for that team to decide. - 25k$ gets everyone who has a mean rating greater than zero, which is more generous than we usually are. We *do* have enough for accom sponsorship, I think. We haven't talked about travel sponsorship yet, or identified where that money will come from. I think that it is reasonable to ask for DC11 surplus to be able to send out travel sponsorship confirmations (and then hopefully not use that surplus). What do you all think? Travel sponsorship team, how much would you like to request? I'll request all the surplus, and we can spend what we need (but no more). - richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1057 days, 15:24 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
[Debconf-team] Penta sql access for cate and n0rman
Admins, cate and n0rman asked several days/weeks ago for penta SQL access. I recall from IRC confirmation that you got the emails. Could you set this up for them? They would then be able to run scripts to do useful things, without me needing to do it myself. This has gotten to the point I would personally like this to be set up, so that I can focus more on my real work. It will also help DebConf to have these people able to operate independently. Thank you, - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1057 days, 16:48 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
[Debconf-team] DebConf11 surplus for DebConf 12 (was: Re: Investigating the Debian involvement in DebConf12)
Zack, We would now like to request the use of the DebConf11 surplus for DebConf12. See below. On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 09:10:32PM +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 02:19:03PM -0400, Richard Darst wrote: I have (unfortunately for my productivity) started looking at registration data and budget, to advise those teams and to be able to answer this question. I can tell you that DC12 team has been keeping a budget (alas, public/private isn't separated out to be able to link to it). snip It looks like right now, we are missing about 8500USD to be able to pay for all sponsored accommodations. Yes, it doesn't add up with respect to what is above. Really, knowing numbers to within +/- 5000 kUSD is pushing it. Hi Richard, thanks a lot for this excellent work. You can count on extra Debian money as a reserve for something as important as sponsored accommodations. _If everything else fail_, we can afford to pay up to 10 kUSD from general Debian reserves for that. No need to pull hair out. Thanks much for this. These two messages describe our current monetary status: http://lists.debconf.org/lurker/message/20120612.164231.5dab56bb.en.html http://lists.debconf.org/lurker/message/20120612.183811.fb6f6511.en.html We would like to be able to count on the DC11 surplus (around 25k$) for DC12. This will allow us to immediately send out travel sponsorship confirmations. It will also mean that the Debian bank (money from general Debian funds, as opposed to surplus) won't need to be used. Thus, I am requesting use of the (entire) DC11 surplus. It is very unlike we'll actually have to use the whole thing - and if/when government support comes through, perhaps not any. Thank you, - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - ehrenfest: up 2 days, 2:20 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf11 surplus for DebConf 12
On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 11:36:16PM +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 04:16:11PM -0400, Richard Darst wrote: These two messages describe our current monetary status: http://lists.debconf.org/lurker/message/20120612.164231.5dab56bb.en.html http://lists.debconf.org/lurker/message/20120612.183811.fb6f6511.en.html If I'm reading them correctly, the (still hypothetical) government support will balance the estimated needs of accommodation and travel sponsorship. That is encouraging. Yes, for the most part, within our ability to guess things right now. We would like to be able to count on the DC11 surplus (around 25k$) for DC12. This will allow us to immediately send out travel sponsorship confirmations. It will also mean that the Debian bank (money from general Debian funds, as opposed to surplus) won't need to be used. Thus, I am requesting use of the (entire) DC11 surplus. It is very unlike we'll actually have to use the whole thing - and if/when government support comes through, perhaps not any. Go for it then. And also go get government support :-), which we clearly need! Thanks. FWIW, and marginally getting back to the topic of pre-approved early tentative budgets, I would have considered perfectly appropriate for such a budget to include the surplus coming from past year. That is coherent with the view that DebConf-s should strive to have _amortized_ zero cost. So this is maybe an example where implementing past plans could have reduced money stress a little bit, which is a worthwhile goal that I think we should try next year. I agree with you that early budgets will be neither complete nor 100% correct. But they are better than nothing and help in making decisions, as this thread shows. It is the understanding of some people that each year, the extra money should be given to Debian, and to use it for N+1 we need to ask each time. So I think asking just now was trying to go along with the plan. I don't mind either way, I just account for it properly. Another random thing: According to the plan, we should send the DC11 surplus back to debian: - For SPI, this is a no-op since there is no separate accounting. - For FFIS, would you rather the extra money be transferred to the Debian earmark according to the plan (and then we might ask for some back, and then transfer the surplus back after DC12), or to DC12 directly? I haven't figured out about how many Euros DC12 will need, so I can't suggest a smaller amount to pass to DC12 yet. - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1057 days, 19:43 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] Travel sponsorship money (and other money things)
On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 01:26:04AM +0100, Moray Allan wrote: On Tue, 2012-06-12 at 12:42 -0400, Richard Darst wrote: - DebConf11 surplus (about 25 k$) - Debian guarentees (10 k$) This looks like double-counting to me, as my impression was that the amount which the DPL agreed to extend as a guarantee would already count against the surplus from last year. Since the original thread didn't really mention surplus, I didn't think of asking for surplus amounts until the end of the thread. When the thread first appeared, we (I) didn't know the surplus amount or existence, leading to my imagining of non-surplus 10k$ amounts. Either way, with the surplus we won't even get to the 10k$ of non-surplus money, so it's basically a moot point. If we were going to need that, then we should clarify, yes. [snip other conversation which I think will just lead to more unneeded confusion, let me know if I should address it.] - richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1057 days, 22:49 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] budget and number of attendees
On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 08:50:37AM -0300, David Bremner wrote: Richard Darst r...@zgib.net writes: It is about 40 people in category Basic, *no* sponsored food or accom and *do* request accommodation. FWIW, I only get 19 from penta. But it could easily be my penta-fu is weak. There seem to be 5 in Basic; want sponsored food, 19 in Basic, no sponsored food or accommodation 20 in --- Please select one --- (using advanced find, conf=dc12, attend=true, accom=true, and then each of the above options separately. Note that the basic; want sponsored food is a substring of basic, want sponsored food and accom so it returns both of them and you need to manually find those five.) (the joys of penta. By the way, doing this, I saw the categories Sponsored and Basic (no accommodation provided), which I think were the DC11 categories. So it does seem we regressed to the DC10 categories.) We should: - Let these people know they are going to need to pay, estimate the costs, add it to our budget, (optionally move them into professinal if that's how we want to handle it) From a friendliness point of view this seems like the preferable option, if it can be managed. Agreed. Also, by the way, we have database logs so that we can see when people first registered (debconf-data:penta/private/find-changes.py). So we can tell when they first registered, if they ask for an exception. Every year, some people attempt to register properly but penta or their browser somehow breaks it in a non-obvious way. For people like debian project members, we can help them here. - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1056 days, 13:06 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] budget and number of attendees
On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 08:41:17AM -0600, Felix Delattre wrote: On 06/09/2012 04:13 PM, Richard Darst wrote: Hi, I was looking at the budget. Has anyone synced the number of people we are planning to pay for with the number of attendees? Yes, I updated the budget a couple of days ago. Including 121 persons (sponsored accommodation) + 21 persons (prof. and corporate registration). Oh, I didn't sum up the numbers of people in hotels. That is good, thanks! But as my other message shows, lots other ask for accom, too. I am having trouble finding the 121 + 21 number, but it has change a bit since then, so that isn't surprising. Don't forget to include attend=true or else you'll get people who are marked as not attending (if some of these actually meant to attend, that is even worse for us!) Right now, for conf=dc12, accom=regular, attend=yes, I see 3 corporate 18 professional 105 Basic + want sponsored food accom 10 Basic, want sponsored accom (and 5 Basic + want sponsored food 19 Basic, no sponsorship ) So we are down to 136 now, plus a few more from the last two, plus some more money from people who pay from the last two, plus a few more who we add to sponsored category. This level of uncertainty is about where we usually are a few days before reconfirmation, so don't feel bad. ( for reference, reconfirmed+attend+accom+dc12 is corp:1 / prof:16 / spons:55 / accomonly:10 / foodonly:3 / basic:8) The budget lists income from prof/corp people. Thus, we can look at the total cost of all rooms anyone asks for (we don't need to separate sponsored from unsponsored when deciding how many rooms we need to pay for). However, some people are requesting rooms and they are not corporate, professional, or sponsored. These people may not know they will be expected to give us money. If they will give us money, it isn't included in the budget. It is likely a lot of them will decide they don't want our accom once they are asked to pay. What are we doing about this category? You are right and I think not all of the team and even less of the participants were really aware of. I would say that we should write them and ask, whether they want accommodation from us or look on their own for their place to sleep. I'd suggest to wait till reconfirmation ends and we have concrete numbers how much accommodation would be. I might work on this ASAP. We will want final accom numbers as soon as possible after the reconfirmation deadline, and needing to deal with all of these people will slow us down. Also, we (and they) want reconfirmation to be the final confirmation, as in, hopefully nothing will change. If we have a possible flux of 40 people after that, both us and they will be disappointed. - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1056 days, 13:38 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] Investigating the Debian involvement in DebConf12
. This is *extremely* helpful. In some past years (maybe dc10 or dc11? I forget exactly), I think we haven't used the bank when it was offered. sponsorship (or economies) to cover them exist. (But even in that case --- and that, according to the minutes, is a point that has been raised in your last meeting --- I don't think that giving travel sponsorship to everybody who have *asked* for it is a goal. We have seen in the past people trying to surf debconf travel sponsorship in spite of their very low Debian involvement, and I guess there are some this year too. Have them already been excluded from the above figures or not?) My personal recommendation would be to at least guarantee funding for sponsored accom (with the team pruning people anywhere possible). Most likely, this won't be needed. Guaranteeing travel sponsorship is another matter. However, if we don't have travel sponsorship soon, prices will increase too much so that some people can't even come at all (side effect: accom/food costs decrease, surplus increases, we now have the surplus to pay for some more travel but it's too late, and so on). I remember hearing that DC12 was supposed to be cheap/have more of a surplus because DC13 was supposed to be more expensive. -team: Is this still the general thought? In summary, budget is *always* bad at this point. Having a Debian bank lets us not pull our hair out, and not have to cut people early and instead use natural cuts after reconfirmation. I think the team is always conscious of money issues and constantly trying to reduce expenses, and won't willingly use debian money just because it's there. - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1056 days, 14:14 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf11 transaction list
On Fri, Jun 08, 2012 at 04:45:01PM -0400, Michael Schultheiss wrote: Richard Darst wrote: Michael, Could I please get this list as soon as possible? There is an active thread about Debian support of DC12, and being able to say for sure the surpluses from last year would help me to be able to state our current status authoritatively. So, if I could get it by tonight, I could reply to that tonight. I'm working on getting Richard this information and should have it available later this evening. I see a 4938.24 USD transaction missing from the SPI spreadsheet. It was used for advance travel sponsorship for some people around 2011 June 24. Let me know if I shouldn't be counting this as a debconf expense. (There's also some rounding with credit card transaction fees summing to two cents, but that's not worth worrying about). Thanks, - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1056 days, 15:18 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] budget and number of attendees
[reordering replies] On Sun, Jun 10, 2012 at 12:27:11PM +0200, Holger Levsen wrote: Hi, The budget lists income from prof/corp people. Thus, we can look at the total cost of all rooms anyone asks for (we don't need to separate sponsored from unsponsored when deciding how many rooms we need to pay for). However, some people are requesting rooms and they are not corporate, professional, or sponsored. These people may not know they will be expected to give us money. If they will give us money, it isn't included in the budget. It is likely a lot of them will decide they don't want our accom once they are asked to pay. What are we doing about this category? Here http://debconf-data.alioth.debian.org/stats/rooms-by-date-2.txt we see the maximum number of rooms asked for debcamp is around 75 (average more like 60) and for debconf it is around 175. If we exclude the basic, without sponsored accommodation peolpe, that drops to: around 65 for debcamp, around 130 for debconf. So, there are around 40 people we need to deal with in the middle category who we should make sure they know they need to pay (and ideally putting them into professional) or removing them from accommodation. what accomodation type did these people request? or do we have 40 people who requested sponsored accom and didnt get it? It is about 40 people in category Basic, *no* sponsored food or accom and *do* request accommodation. We should: - Let these people know they are going to need to pay, estimate the costs, add it to our budget, (optionally move them into professinal if that's how we want to handle it) - Let them know they won't have accom and mark them in penta as not having accom. At least that's my opinion. include them in the budget? ;) Can be done once the above is decided. I was looking at the budget. Has anyone synced the number of people we are planning to pay for with the number of attendees? I don't think so. Once the above is done, we can properly do this. Unless this gets done, we can't properly do the reconfirmation procedure - as in, peolpe will have reconfirmed, but we still won't be able to get final numbers for accom/budget purposes. And yes, I am using we as someone who isn't me, since I don't have time to deal with this stuff... - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1055 days, 14:04 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] budget and number of attendees
On Sat, Jun 09, 2012 at 06:13:23PM -0400, Richard Darst wrote: Hi, I was looking at the budget. Has anyone synced the number of people we are planning to pay for with the number of attendees? On a related note... I don't see anything confidential in the budget. Do any of those numbers need to be private? If not, could it be moved to debconf-data so we can link to it publicly in our reports and emails? - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1054 days, 19:28 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
[Debconf-team] DebConf11 financial report
Hello, I have just received the final DebConf11 transactions list, so now I can make a final report on its finances. DebConf11 Summary = Some highlights: 65,512.44 EUR income, about 20k€ from attendees, 42k€ from sponsors. 40,137.73 EUR expenses, about 32k€ of which was for attendee travel sponsorship. 19,901.84 EUR surplus, about 3.4k€ at FFIS and 19.9k$ at SPI. A full balance sheet is at the bottom of this message. Surpluses will be recorded as returning to general Debian equity as soon as it is on the books. Debian ran a Newbies initiative, paying for travel expenses for various people. However, some of this money was reimbursed via DebConf. I recorded this as a 1.8k€ income from general Debian funds (incomes:debian below), to make it not a net DebConf expense, since that is what was agreed. 405 GBP was already returned to general Debian funds through various means (debian-uk). No other Debian money was touched. DebConf11 had various on-site transactions, via the DIVA organization. However, this organization essentially went rogue, and we have no report or mechanism of knowing its transactions. I had originally attempt to track local money (anything within Bosnia), but this was impossible to track as they were uncooperative. So, there were significant venue, hotel, and food expenses, somehow paid for by the .ba government through DIVA. Eventually, we decided to only track global (non-Bosnia) money. We think. This report only tracks money, expenses, and incomes from outside of Bosnia - all the Debian trusted organizations. One sponsor was unable to pay during the DC11 cycle, they will pay to DC12 instead (equity:debconf12). This is counted as being passed on to DC12, though as income in the DC11 cycle (and not DC12). There were 17 financial events from October to December 2011 (inclusive). There were six financial events in 2012. One does not simply have DebConf be over and everything instantly done. I only hope there isn't any more coming up. The DebConf11 ledger is public (without names) at http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debconf-data/dc11/ledger-dc11?revision=3402view=co If you have any questions, please let me know. Thank you, - Richard The full balance sheet is below, with ledger/hleder conventions, converted to Euros: 19,901.84 EUR assets (Current surpluses soon to be rolled into debian) 3,358.33 EURffis 16,543.51 EURspi 5,485.15 EUR equity 5,000.00 EURdebconf12 (A sponsor is paying DC12 instead) 485.15 EURdebian (Money already returned to Debian) 40,137.73 EUR expenses 358.17 EURbankfee 17.58 EUR newbies 215.79 EURconf 4,550.00 EURshipping 839.86 EURtaxes 1,070.65 EURteam-travel 32,570.95 EURtravel-sponsorship 1,776.80 EUR newbies (Debian newbies initiative) 532.30 EURvideoteam 414.68 EUR shipping -65,512.44 EUR incomes (By convention, these values are negative of income) -20,392.56 EURattendee (All attendee fees) -2,118.84 EUR corp -450.00 EUR debcamp -17,823.73 EUR prof -1,794.38 EURdebian (paying for newbies initiative) -822.27 EURdonation -42,015.52 EURsponsor -487.71 EURunclaimed-reimbursement (not travel related) In actual currencies: 3,358.33 EUR 20,700.87 USD assets 3,358.33 EURffis 20,700.87 USDspi 5,000.00 EUR 405.00 GBP equity 5,000.00 EURdebconf12 405.00 GBPdebian 22,083.23 EUR 197.89 GBP 22,294.94 USD expenses 19.85 EUR 423.34 USDbankfee 22.00 USD newbies 120.62 EUR 119.09 USDconf 4,550.00 EURshipping 839.86 EURtaxes 833.60 EUR 197.89 GBPteam-travel 15,601.68 EUR 21,233.62 USDtravel-sponsorship 863.57 EUR 1,142.72 USD newbies 117.62 EUR 518.89 USDvideoteam 518.89 USD shipping -30,666.33 EUR -405.00 GBP -42,995.81 USD incomes -13,570.00 EUR -405.00 GBP -7,930.00 USDattendee -1,000.00 EUR -1,400.00 USD corp -450.00 EUR debcamp -12,120.00 EUR -405.00 GBP -6,530.00 USD prof -863.57 EUR -1,164.72 USDdebian -365.14 EUR -572.00 USDdonation -15,750.00 EUR -32,866.00 USDsponsor -117.62 EUR -463.09 USDunclaimed-reimbursement -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1054 days, 20:20 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free
Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf11 transaction list
Michael, Could I please get this list as soon as possible? There is an active thread about Debian support of DC12, and being able to say for sure the surpluses from last year would help me to be able to state our current status authoritatively. So, if I could get it by tonight, I could reply to that tonight. Thank you, - Richard On Sun, May 27, 2012 at 07:14:37AM -0400, Richard Darst wrote: Michael, Could you send me the final DebConf11 transaction list - the text file that lists the description, date, bank fees, and amount for every debconf transaction? After I get this, we should be able to call DebConf11 done from the SPI side of things. I will try to put this info into the DC11 ledger as fast as I can, round up the last bit, and then publish the final balances. Thank you, - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1053 days, 15:48 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] Data processing scripts
On Fri, Jun 08, 2012 at 03:44:06PM +0100, Moray Allan wrote: On Thu, 2012-06-07 at 19:46 -0400, Richard Darst wrote: The most useful files are below, should be self explanatory. Please could you clarify the meaning of the three-column bits at the middle and at the bottom? For certain things, like food, I thought it would be useful to know what preferences were by where people were staying (with us, not with us), since that affects the chance they will actually eat with us. Same for t-shirt, role vs debian/debconf status. It saves another query asking these things. If you want any more of these types breakdowns, just ask. On what's probably a related topic, did someone sort out yet the inconsistencies between the multiple Basic categories and the separate food and accommodation questions? I don't think so, but there is preliminary kind of stuff regarding it from error checking code from the past. *maybe* it's been used? - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1053 days, 15:52 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] Data processing scripts
On Thu, Jun 07, 2012 at 07:46:21PM -0400, Richard Darst wrote:
http://debconf-data.alioth.debian.org/stats/registration-data.txt
http://debconf-data.alioth.debian.org/stats/rooms-by-date-2.txt
http://debconf-data.alioth.debian.org/stats/food-by-date.txt
For these scripts, I should point out the importance of the
only-attend, only-reconfirmed, only-arrived (and only-all)
directories.
For each of these reports, you can limit to only {attend, reconfirmed,
arrived}. Those respective subdirectories process the data limited by
those criteria. (And the only-all directory does everyone in the dc12
system, even if they aren't marked attend).
I occasionally change the top-level scripts to reflect what stage of
the conference we are in (attend - reconfirmed - arrived). I think
registration-data lists what the filter is.
Also, if the files get out of date (look at timestamps), poke me.
- Richard
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Re: [Debconf-team] Data processing scripts
On Fri, Jun 08, 2012 at 10:48:29PM +0100, Moray Allan wrote: On Fri, 2012-06-08 at 15:44 +0100, Moray Allan wrote: On what's probably a related topic, did someone sort out yet the inconsistencies between the multiple Basic categories and the separate food and accommodation questions? I said related because of the first and second three-column sections here: http://debconf-data.alioth.debian.org/stats/registration-data.txt Having confirmed what they mean, I see 18 Basic; no sponsored food or accommodatio Regular DebConf i.e. there are quite a few people who have chosen unsponsored Basic but also chosen DebConf accommodation. That is the correct interpretation. From my point of view that doesn't make sense, and those people should be either Professional or Corporate. It's possible that some of them made a mistake about the category question before the sponsorship deadline, but probably others have used this to effectively ask for sponsorship after that deadline had passed. I agree that that is how it should be. Too bad we haven't been able to make it so. The errorcheck for this says it is an error, not just a warning about payment in DC10, so presumably we didn't allow this in DC11 (but due to penta changes, I can't confirm this about DC11). Some people remember differently, though. Anyway, I created a report for the registration team so that they can deal with stuff like this. I don't have time to. - Ricahrd -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1053 days, 20:16 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
[Debconf-team] Some assumptions about the DC11 accounting
Hi, In finalizing DC11 accounting, I am making these assumptions. If anyone disagrees with any of these, please let me know what you would rather instead. - Richard One sponsor forgot to pay DC11, I am recording this as being passed on to DC12 (since that is where the money will appear). So, it is DC11 income, not DC12, but isn't counting as our surplus. It also isn't counting as DC11 income. Two organizers were owed money for various expenses, which they never claimed. I am marking this as donations (unclaimed-reimbursement), instead of following up. I see four newbies which were paid out of DC11 travel funds, total cost of 1794.38 EUR. I am making a virtual transaction saying that this money came as an _income_ from debian, as opposed to being debian equity we are using, since Debian agreed to pay for this already, thus it should not count against our surplus from DC11. For the final report, I am using USD/EUR exchange rates of 2012 December 31. -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1053 days, 22:01 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf11 transaction list
On Fri, Jun 08, 2012 at 04:45:01PM -0400, Michael Schultheiss wrote: Richard Darst wrote: Michael, Could I please get this list as soon as possible? There is an active thread about Debian support of DC12, and being able to say for sure the surpluses from last year would help me to be able to state our current status authoritatively. So, if I could get it by tonight, I could reply to that tonight. I'm working on getting Richard this information and should have it available later this evening. Thank you, I got the list and it is all recorded in the ledger. Everything seems to match up, which is great. A report should be forthcoming. - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1053 days, 22:36 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
[Debconf-team] Data processing scripts
Hi,
http://debconf-data.alioth.debian.org/stats/ (note new home on alioth)
is now being updated with data from this year. Let me know if you
notice anything suspicious or wrong - I may not have upgraded DC11 -
DC12 properly. Money related things aren't updated. The most useful
files are below, should be self explanatory. Things update every
hour.
http://debconf-data.alioth.debian.org/stats/registration-data.txt
http://debconf-data.alioth.debian.org/stats/rooms-by-date-2.txt
http://debconf-data.alioth.debian.org/stats/food-by-date.txt
old-dc{10,11} has data from past years, for reference. If you want
any more data or info, let me know.
- Richard
--
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|http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740
| Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free
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Re: [Debconf-team] Transfering DC12 funds to Nicaragua
Norman, On Thu, Jun 07, 2012 at 02:12:38PM -0600, Norman García Aguilar wrote: Hello Team, I would like to know what is the procedure in order to transfer DebConf12 money from SPI/FISS to Nicaragua. We are very close to DebConf12 and we need to pay some things. The payments we need to do are: * Venue: We want to pay a % now. * Food: We need to pay a % * T-shirts: We need to order this ASAP. * Bags: We need to order this ASAP. * Banners: We need to order this ASAP. All the amounts are in debconf-team svn We have all the transfer information ready. We need to know who are the persons in charge and what is the procedure to make the request to SPI/FFIS. Perhaps you could say here how much you are wanting to transfer now? This email is more to maintain transparency, rather than really ask permission, so it would be good to say how much we need, what organization you think it should come from, how much goes to which of these places (so that people who can't see svn can also follow along). - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1052 days, 21:25 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] Tracing a DebConf11 transaction
Martin/Phil, On Sun, May 27, 2012 at 09:28:25AM -0400, Martin Michlmayr wrote: * Richard Darst r...@zgib.net [2012-05-27 07:09]: 16:26 Ganneff there is 3476.78EUR going to one, 2168.07EUR going to the other. beginning of month 9 I think this money was supposed to go from DebConf to debian.ch, which lent money to wire to Bosnia for travel reimbursements. The whole thing is sort of unclear to me, I haven't been able to get the exact story (even back then when I asked). I cannot find the two amounts in any ffis.de transactions. Unfortunately, we don't have access to SPI, debian.ch, etc, transactions. Well, I figured it out: There are no two transactions that sum to either of those values. They are written as a bunch of individual transactions to individuals, as if they were paid directly. (not debian.ch). Only when you sum seven numbers does it equal the sum of the money sent to debian.ch. So, I assume that these are the money sent to debian.ch, and you will see it only two transactions on the debian.ch side, and it'll all match up now. I'm sorry for the noise, and I'll make proper notes in our ledger about what has actually happened here. Incidentally, do you see any 220 EUR payment on 2011-09-02 in the Debian earmark? It vanished from the DebConf earmark, and I wonder if it got reclassified under Debian (given that apparently this reflect logical, not actual, transactions). Thank you, - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1042 days, 11:41 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
[Debconf-team] Tracing a DebConf11 transaction
Auditors, I am trying to trace this DebConf transaction (date, source, destination, I already know the purpose): 16:26 Ganneff there is 3476.78EUR going to one, 2168.07EUR going to the other. beginning of month 9 I think this money was supposed to go from DebConf to debian.ch, which lent money to wire to Bosnia for travel reimbursements. The whole thing is sort of unclear to me, I haven't been able to get the exact story (even back then when I asked). Perhaps Ganneff can shed some more light now. I am not too worried about the middle steps, I'm just wanting to make sure it did come from us. It was supposed to eventually come from DebConf funds, but I have yet to be able to find what account the money came from. (it went to attendees for travel sponsorship, we don't need to worry about that end, just what account it came from.) In order to create an accurate DebConf11 report, I would like to track all the money down. Do you think you could check the Debian accounts at various organizations - mainly FFIS and maybe debian.ch and see if you can see transactions of these amounts towards the end of 2011 September? I've cc'ed debconf-team, but you can reply to me privately to work stuff out if you'd like. If you can't find them, I guess we'll have to think harder. Thank you, - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1041 days, 7:38 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
[Debconf-team] DebConf11 transaction list
Michael, Could you send me the final DebConf11 transaction list - the text file that lists the description, date, bank fees, and amount for every debconf transaction? After I get this, we should be able to call DebConf11 done from the SPI side of things. I will try to put this info into the DC11 ledger as fast as I can, round up the last bit, and then publish the final balances. Thank you, - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 1041 days, 8:05 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] Questions for global team from UCA
On Tue, Mar 06, 2012 at 09:21:26AM -0600, Leandro Gómez wrote: 2012/3/5 Andrew McMillan and...@morphoss.com I wonder if we could get some kind of statement from Columbia University in New York regarding the value they felt they got from hosting DebConf10? That would be really nice, and it could help us in securing the venue. I believe the people at Columbia were very happy with DebConf as a group, and I think we might be able to get a positive statement from Daisy Nguyen or Eben Moglen about the benefits to the university - and not just about how impressed they were with the behaviour of the group as a whole, as seen in the attached e-mail. Daisy is offering to send a letter (email) directly to the UCA people, copying us... can someone figure out who it should be sent to, and reply (off-list) to both me and Phil Hands with the info? - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 973 days, 17:46 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] Question for DebConf13 bids: Costs
On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 10:22:58PM +0200, Aigars Mahinovs wrote: On 25 January 2012 21:32, Moray Allan mo...@sermisy.org wrote: It appears (sponsorship team please correct me here), that the monetary sponsorship brought in for DebConf11 was less than €40 000. Does that include people with professional/corporate participation level? DC11 attendee payments was another (approx) 20 000 EUR, a little bit less. A rough (slighly out of date) categorization of DC11 costs can be found here: http://rkd.zgib.net/http/debconf/accounting-balances.txt (note: that file is old, from August or so, but most expenses are there). - richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 918 days, 17:29 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] On-site cash
On Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 07:33:15AM +0200, Christian PERRIER wrote: My understanding is that, as the extra money went back, through debian.ch, to Debian, this is not DebConf money. Still, I wanted to mention this operation for the sake of transparency. Ah, yes. As you correctly assume, I was considering this outside of DebConf, so the source or destination of this money is not immediately relevant to my goals - but knowing the 450km number may prove useful when trying to track everything down and see some unknown surplus. Either way, thanks for organizing the buses, and the information. Similar to this, I am not immediately interested in things like merchandising money collection, but if any got mixed up with DebConf money it might be useful to know as I go tracking everything down. Thanks again, - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 765 days, 2:52 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] outstanding DebConf11 expenses
On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 09:40:46AM +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: Dear DebConf team, we are in the need of replacing some expensive hardware and, before approving that, I'd like to know the state of planned Debian expenses. As DebConf expenses are a big chapter in our expenses, I'm hereby contacting you to know the state of DebConf11 outstanding expenses. Can you please let me know the expenses you already know will have to be paid for DebConf11 and their amount? Ballpark figures (+/- some k EUR) would be enough for my needs, although of course precision never hurts. A breakdown on whether SPI or FFIS are expected to pay them would be a plus. Current assets: SPI: 35,743.41 USD (included as part of Debian money) FFIS: 27,726.77 EUR (separate earmark) Debconf11 sponsor/attendee payments yet to be received: 5450 EUR to ffis 10500 USD to SPI Expected future expenses: 500 USD from SPI 11500 or so from FFIS + 22000 EUR of travel sponsorship. I can not track this as well as the other numbers in this message, but I am guessing that about 5000 EUR from FFIS and ~25000 in USD from SPI, but travel costs can be less than requested, so this is a very imprecise number. I haven't had enough data to track this (I tried, remember?), so this took the most time to try to figure out, and has the most possibility for human error. Thus, right now, given this data, we might expect around a 20k USD in leftovers at SPI and 16k EUR in leftovers at FFIS. To have a buffer to meet our obligations, you could leave minimum ~26k in SPI and ~17k EUR at FFIS (our earmark, not debian's) in case our future payments do not come in on time. It seems like we could move ~10k EUR from debconf11-debian earmark at FFIS if needed. If you have any questions or would like to discuss more about where to take money, just find me on IRC. Thanks, - richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 764 days, 15:22 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
[Debconf-team] On-site travel reimbursements
Joerg, Could you (or someone who knows) give me the information on travel sponsorship money movements which happened in cash during DC11? I understand that cash was withdrawn from debian.ch, and given to people for whom the money could not be transferred after DebConf. Could you tell me the exact date and amount of cash withdrawn (can be on public list), and the dates and amounts of cash given to each attendee (should be privately), and anything which happened to left-over cash? This is needed to keep up the quality of the budget. I had tried to ask for it during DebConf, but we were all busy then, so better now than before the records are lost or forgotten. Thanks, - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 764 days, 15:27 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
[Debconf-team] On-site cash
Hi, Was cash collected from attendees on-site? Was it given out on-site? If so, could I get whatever records there are from this? More detailed is always better, the standard is date, amount, purpose. If cash was handled on site, what happened to the remainder of it? This would be useful to know to get our overall budgetary picture, and to know if this was made part of our global budget or was taken by DIVA. Thanks, - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 764 days, 15:37 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] Sorting out the budget
On Fri, Aug 05, 2011 at 03:50:54PM +0200, Velimir Iveljic wrote: Also, about what adnan talked about on IRC the other day: Diva asks if you would be willing to pay for the full travel costs of the 2 Google people (Jesus and Guido) and in return they would pay the accommodation and other costs (food, etc.) for the 5 people from Banja Luka. (Just to note that the situation with the 5 people has already been argued between us (debconf) and DIVA and agreed that the cost will be covered from the debconf global budget. If you want to start this discussion again let me know :D). By my calculations the cost of the accommodation is: 5400 KM – Vidovic (3 persons) 945 KM – Palas (2 persons) 1050 KM – Bosna (2 persons) - 7395 KM Total Although this will not affect what we do (I think), but did you notice that there are seven people listed there? Also, according to a past email, only three people would have counted as BL-locals during DebConf. I did some more calculations and handling the travel sponsorship of Adnan's google people is still cheaper, but not by how 7395km makes us think. - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 748 days, 11:32 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
[Debconf-team] SPI transaction list
Michael, Could you send me (privately) a list of all the DebConf-related SPI transactions? Something like a bank account statement (list of date, description, amount) is all I need. If it would help save you time, we could ask zack to approve sending *all Debian* transactions, and I can try to figure out what is DebConf and what isn't. I am asking for a list now to find our current status, but of course I'll need more as we try to close everything up. Thanks, - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 748 days, 13:28 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] Sorting out the budget
On Mon, Aug 08, 2011 at 05:45:27PM +0200, Velimir Iveljic wrote: On Mon, Aug 8, 2011 at 4:49 PM, Richard Darst r...@zgib.net wrote: On Fri, Aug 05, 2011 at 03:50:54PM +0200, Velimir Iveljic wrote: Also, about what adnan talked about on IRC the other day: Diva asks if you would be willing to pay for the full travel costs of the 2 Google people (Jesus and Guido) and in return they would pay the accommodation and other costs (food, etc.) for the 5 people from Banja Luka. (Just to note that the situation with the 5 people has already been argued between us (debconf) and DIVA and agreed that the cost will be covered from the debconf global budget. If you want to start this discussion again let me know :D). By my calculations the cost of the accommodation is: 5400 KM – Vidovic (3 persons) 945 KM – Palas (2 persons) 1050 KM – Bosna (2 persons) - 7395 KM Total Although this will not affect what we do (I think), but did you notice that there are seven people listed there? Also, according to a past email, only three people would have counted as BL-locals during DebConf. I did some more calculations and handling the travel sponsorship of Adnan's google people is still cheaper, but not by how 7395km makes us think. - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 748 days, 11:32 | http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team 2 people were in bosnia for the time of DebCamp, they were then moved to Palas. 3 people were in Vidovic during DebCamp and DebConf. OK, what was above is quite confusing. Also, the moves happened partway through DebCamp, further reducing the costs, correct? The numbers were not given to me by DIVA, these are mine calculations, which i made with the prices of the hotels we had (since diva told me that is how much it will cost). I just want to make sure numbers added up, since it is best to not take money matters on faith. If you don't like this, i can speak to diva and get everything back as it was. No, I am not asking for that, I am just trying to check all details given the lack of accountability DIVA has shown thus far. I wanted to avoid DIVA saying pay 1500€ to save yourself 2000€ when 3000€ is actually 1000€, for example. To make it clear: you should still assume that DebConf will pay the Google speakers' travel costs. Thanks, - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 748 days, 14:22 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] SPI transaction list
On Mon, Aug 08, 2011 at 12:38:36PM -0400, Richard Darst wrote: Michael, Could you send me (privately) a list of all the DebConf-related SPI transactions? Something like a bank account statement (list of date, description, amount) is all I need. I got all the info, and updated the ledger with all the data. This includes correcting all the dates, some other errors, and adding in all of the various bank/credit card fees. There is still much else to do, but we are slowly making progress. - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 748 days, 19:17 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] frontdesk ideas
On Thu, Aug 04, 2011 at 05:31:18PM +0200, Holger Levsen wrote: Hi, On Donnerstag, 4. August 2011, Blars Blarson wrote: As someone who has helped with the debconf front desk for the last two years (debconf 10 and 11) I have some ideas that I think would help make the front desk run smoother. sounds like something for http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/Category:DebConf_Manual and yearly updated cheatsheets :-) I added links to this message from this page: http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/FrontDesk but the page needs some actual content, too. - richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 747 days, 14:53 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
[Debconf-team] Actual food numbers
Hi, I have been trying to get food numbers (number of meals each day), just because it seems like we have them this year and would be a nice guide for future years. If this is not possible to get, it is fine, it is just nice for future. Anyone who knows can just add them to here (or to debconf-data svn): http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf11/Food Thanks, - richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 747 days, 15:00 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
[Debconf-team] Sorting out the budget
Hi, It is probably time to sort out all the financial transactions we made over DebConf. If someone could get all financial information from DIVA, that would be great. However, it seems there's a chance we won't be able to. I would rather not attempt to track things which we have no auditable trail for, thus if we can't get good information from DIVA, we might just call all local transactions as sponsored, cost unknown and just track what we do know. Basically, I rather not go guessing at things - and that includes knowing half and part is unknown. I'd welcome suggestions from people who at DebConf as to what is feasible and useful here. The onsite things I have are here: http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debconf-data/dc11/ledger-dc11-onsite?view=markup For all global transactions, I use the bank records from SPI and FFIS to ensure completeness and correctness, so the global part is not a problem to finish. Thanks, - richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 742 days, 4:16 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
[Debconf-team] Invoicing attendees
Hi, Since DC9, the way I have requested invoices from attendees is. The only reason I do it this way because it is what I was told during DC9, and haven't rethought it since then. - Attendee requests an invoice, provides name and address of the party that should be invoiced. - I request an invoice from either SPI or FFIS, depending on who they have or will send money to. - Wait anywhere from a day or two to weeks for the invoice to come back. - If it takes to long, ping SPI/FFIS treasurer again and request it be made. - Once we get the invoice back, send it to the attendee. This can result in very long delays in getting the invoice back, as the treasurers are very busy. For some people, they need an invoice from FFIS or SPI, since it is useful for tax purposes. Some may need it for getting reimbursed, which *might* be more flexible, depending on their employer. Since Debian and DebConf are not separate legal entities, its invoices may be of limited use? So my questions to this list is: Is there a better way to do this? Some ideas: - Make invoices from DebConf, and ignore the fact that it is not a legal entity, and the money is actually going to FFIS/SPI. Is this a financially sound thing to do? - Provide payment receipts from DebConf, confirming receipt of payment and indicating the legal organization which received the payment. This could have different levels of formality - a quick email would not be hard to do, and if it could satisfy most cases, it would be (This happens automatically with clickpledge payments - payers get an email from cp saying they paid. It is not as good for tax purposes as an invoice, but...) I am sure there are other ideas - hopefully we can streamline this for future years. Thanks, - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 742 days, 5:48 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] reciept of Attendance payment
On Thu, Jul 28, 2011 at 01:13:55PM +0300, Riku Voipio wrote: Hi, I would need a reciept for the debconf attendance. Will all paid attendees get one aynways, or does one need to request them? If latter, how and when? Note that I'm not in any kind of hurry, I just want to know if I need to ask before some deadline. Email registrat...@debconf.org with a name and address you would like on an invoice (for example, your company's name/address), and we can request an invoice from FFIS. - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 743 days, 2:19 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] [Debconf11-localteam] Offer for electrical installations inside the venue
On Mon, Jul 18, 2011 at 02:57:46PM +0200, Marinko Tarlać wrote: Hi to all. Here is the offer for the electrical installations inside the building. As I can see, the price for equipment and the installations is 1900KM + 323KM (VAT)... That is 2223KM (1140 €) As I can see from the offer, the price includes 30m hi-power Cu cord which is quite expensive (around 12KM/m). In case we need more than 30m, the price will be corrected. Was this the offer actually accepted? Was there any further cable needed, or is the total price only 2223km ? Is this final? Thank you, - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 731 days, 17:18 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] [budget] batteries cables
On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 11:51:26AM +0100, Philip Hands wrote: my money, so I'm to be reimbursed (The last receipt being from Nattie, which I paid her for) Would you please mail me the state of my expenses in Ledger once this is added, so I know how much to whinge about to DIVA, and so that I can double check that I've logged all the receipts I have. It seems that it might be easiest if I simply keep drawing cash out and reimburse all the other locally incurred expenses -- that way, if we get money from DIVA in a timely manner, I can sell the currency to incoming attendees next week, and if not FFIS only need to sort out one transfer (and since they can do it to a German Euro account that should be simplest for all. All have been committed, and I privately mailed you+DIVA about the current status. DIVA just replied to me Everything is ok!!! Any cash management or reimbursement plan you'd like is fine by me, just let me know and I'll track it. - Richard -- | Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 731 days, 17:45 |http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740 | Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
