Re: [COSCUP / GNOME.Asia 2010] Seeking for financial support.

[Rex Tsai <chihchun kalug linux org tw>]

Hi, Fred

Actually, my original request is looking for more funding, not the
suggestions of cutting budgets.

In COSCUP 2009, 156 attendees filled out the post-event survey, 86%
rating talks as 4 points out of 5 or above, and 97.4% willing
recommend their relatives to attend COSCUP. I can tell you that people
love the event, and they are crazy about it this year. It's not only
we invited great speakers, provided informative talks,  have
environment for discussions. It's also we care about participants, and
create joyful activities for them.  Joy (歡樂) is the main spiritual of
COSCUP, and these resources (BoF, food) are the fundamental of
spiritual. Please try not to kill it for us.

It seems it's impossible for you or GNOME foundation to raise more
money, we got the message. We will discuss what's alternative
solutions in irc meeting tomorrow.

Regards
-Rex

2010/7/12 Frederic Muller <fred beijinglug org>:
> Dear Rex,
>
> For regularly attending conferences I can say that food at any conference is
> my last concern and motivation to attend. A successful conference boils down
> to famous speakers (and the great non-famous one i get to discover), quality
> of talks (not so marketing, but information packed, and discussions which
> happened, new or strengthening project/community arisen from the
> conference). If I want good food.... i stay at home and cook myself :D
>
> And this has nothing with the fact that it will be impossible for us to
> raise an extra 5K, this is a separate issue.
>
> What I can suggest, since we have all registered members email address is to
> put up a poll asking why they attend a conference with difference reasons to
> rate, or ask them to chose between less people and more food, or less food
> and more people. Then we'll know exactly what our participants think.
>
> I hope we can find a good way that make you feel comfortable as well, but I
> would chose more people and less food any day of the week.
>
> Fred
>
> On 07/12/2010 12:24 PM, Rex Tsai wrote:
>>
>> Hi, Pockey
>>
>> Thanks for suggestion.
>>
>> However, We trend to not cut snacks / drinks for BoF, breaks. Current
>> quantity of food is already not sufficient for all participant. (since
>> we uses same budget for more pople)
>>
>> As I said in the last mail, we like to maintain *quality* of
>> conference and make participants *comfortable*. If we are really short
>> for cash, we would prefer to politely turn participants down by reject
>> their registration, but not cut the resources we can provide for
>> participants.
>>
>> If GASC and GNOME foundation can support more then 10k USD (includes
>> sponsorship of Google,Oracle) for the event, then I am sure we can
>> make the event a great success. :-)
>>
>> Regards
>> -Rex
>>
>> 2010/7/12 Pockey<pockey beijinglug org>:
>>
>>>
>>> Dear Rex,
>>>
>>> Thanks for your updates, we will definitely do our best to involve more,
>>> if we cannot get more funding from our side due to the limited time,
>>> maybe let's also discuss about how to cut cost in general? e.g. cut the
>>> snacks / drinks for BoF and 会场餐点 breaks？ we can save 6363.63 USD on
>>> this. While this money can be used to cover the extra cost, let's
>>> discuss tomorrow.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> Pockey
>>>
>>> On Sat, 2010-07-10 at 22:39 +0800, Rex Tsai wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Dear all,
>>>>
>>>> As we discussed last Tuesday, registration of event was opened at 7/5,
>>>> and we received 1193 registrations in 85 minutes. However, some of
>>>> them registered more then once, because a bug of new registration
>>>> system of this year. There are about 900 unique participants will
>>>> attend to the event. But we only planned to release 610 seats, there
>>>> are 310 more people then we expected.
>>>>
>>>> We have examined the log, we found the first 610 seats were all booked
>>>> in 15 minutes. (You can see the enclosed chart for the numbers of
>>>> first 30 minutes.)  And there are even more people like to attend the
>>>> event, but they missed the open registration day at 7/5. To response
>>>> for highly expectation of thousand of participants, we like to open
>>>> more seats for them, as you suggested in the irc meeting last Tuesday.
>>>>
>>>> The first idea is to have one more conference room for the fifth
>>>> track, since we have rejected about 30 talks for sharing 37.5% of
>>>> conference program with GNOME.Asia Summit. But it turns out that the
>>>> team can not afford 5th track, it cost too much human resources, and
>>>> it's way to difficult to manage at one month before the event.
>>>>
>>>> So , our approaches are -
>>>> * We are now working with a local Blog Services Provider to provide
>>>> live streaming for the event.
>>>> * We have booked 2 more conference rooms for people who can not have
>>>> seats in the main venue. We will provide broadcasting of the talks in
>>>> these rooms, so we can have 400 more seats for participants.
>>>>
>>>> However, to maintain basic *quality* and make participants
>>>> *comfortable* in the meetings. There are more extra expenses, like
>>>> venue renting, lunch boxes, insurance, water, walkie talkie, etc. (see
>>>> budget list for more details[1]) Which will cost us about NTD 202,600
>>>> (about 6,300 USD). That will make us running a risky cash flow, and we
>>>> will not save cash as reserve fund for COSCUP 2011.  (Since COSCUP
>>>> grows more then 50% every year, we always save 25% of sponsorship cash
>>>> as revolving fund for next year. In fact, our 10K USD revolving fund
>>>> will be all used for the event of this year.)
>>>>
>>>> The current sponsorship status are
>>>> * COSCUP - raised about 40K USD
>>>> * GASC       - raised about   5K USD
>>>>
>>>> In order to afford the extra costs and maintain a healthy financial
>>>> status, we need more funding. In fact, COSCUP team has already secured
>>>> two more sponsors after 7/5.  Other than COSCUP team's own cost like
>>>> travel sponsorship for speakers/staffs, meetings, web sites, there are
>>>> about 33K USD for shared cost of two teams.  We do need to find more
>>>> financial support for the event, and I like to ask your help for
>>>> funding. I hope we can discuss and find solutions in the irc meeting
>>>> of 7/13.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks.
>>>>
>>>> [1]
>>>> http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AgIA9Z5Z55vldGhmSThMblNzZ3BLczl5QVhrZEdvQVE
>>>> Best Regards
>>>> -Rex
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>