Re: GNOME.Asia Summit 2011 budget

[Frederic Muller <fredm gnome org>]

On 12/03/2010 12:14 AM, Brian Cameron wrote:
> Fred:
>
> > I'd like to follow up on the proposal from Utian / Indonesia as my
> > connection had issues during the Q&A discussion. There are a few
> > important points/questions that must be raised:
> > 1. Budget wise: this is a grassroot/community managed conference. While
> > HK proposal has a very reasonable budget in line with previous year
> > spendings (US 10k-15k), the budget of 48K in Indonesia is over the roof!
> > 2. Sponsorship section: are the sponsors listed companies you already
> > have dealing with? Do you know how much money they would be willing to
> > give?
>
> Why is the Indonesia budget so high? Perhaps they are inexperienced at
> putting together a good competitive budget. So it might be worthwhile
> to encourage them to find ways to make the budget more in-line with
> expectations.

I had a quick look at the details. T-shirts are too expensive, marketing 
materials alone cost almost USD 10K. So I think they have a sourcing 
issue. Then they account for hardware purchases which I don't think is 
necessary (I didn't go into calculating those). Also we're buying 750 
pens with 300 at 5000 Rupiah and 350 at 10,000 Rupiah... I doubt we need 
to buy those and I wonder about the price discrepancy.

Overall my impression is that every line in the budget is too high and 
often not needed. They can always look at the HK budget pricing and each 
lines in that budget. Sure some items might be missing but 10% are 
allocated to 'miscellaneous' which should definitely cover a few extra 
extension cables and some tapes or last minute cost.
I think HK is probably the most expensive of the 3 places (India, 
Indonesia and HK) so there must be ways to do better in Bali especially 
around April. April is the low season period, no tourist, no 
Australians, no nothing. So accommodation and venue wise "people" should 
be fighting to get us.

Last but not least the Indonesian proposal in Bali doesn't have any 
information about the venue, though it cost a mere $8.5K.

You also need to take into account that the HK proposal includes 
accommodation and food, coffee, etc for 50 people (based on 2 people per 
room) for the first 3 days/nights (hackfest) regardless of the travel 
subsidies (US 6.6K) and that includes the venue as well. Changes are 
that people without travel subsidies will be paying for their own share 
of this cost.

I would strongly recommend the Indonesian team to go on site, visit 
places and sponsors. That's what Pockey and I did last week and 
obviously it has been useful.

Should I say I don't mind going to Bali to help out next week? ;-)


> For example, if one budget included an income of charging people at the
> door and the other did not, then this would make one budget look much
> better than the other since the overall cost would be lower for the
> one accepting fees. I'm not sure if this is a good example in this
> situation, though.
>
> > -> Remember that we're hoping to cover all conference cost (including
> > travel subsidies) with the sponsors we identify and secure. The higher
> > the budget the more difficult the task will be. Looking the Indonesian
> > proposal makes me think we're targeting almost a 100K budget (with 40K
> > for travel subsidies, based on the pre-event survey). Does this really
> > makes sense?
> > Should the Indonesian team (together with the committee) be able to
> > raise that amount of money, does it really make sense to spend 50K in
> > the conference alone, when I am sure we can run such an event for 1/3 of
> > the amount.
>
> If the Indonesian team has not already secured funding, then they
> probably should do so quickly. If they did have funding already, then
> that would, I'm sure, impact our decision. If they have no clear plan
> for securing funding, then this would be a red flag to me.
>
> > So when making your proposal to the committee, think about those issues:
> > - costs
> > - ability to cover those costs
> > - benefits for the GNOME foundation (vs buying hardware that will never
> > be reused for example)
>
> Good points.
>
> Brian