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

[Pockey <pockey beijinglug org>]

Dear Rex and Fred,

We got your points and respect your concerns. Let's discuss about it
over IRC tomorrow :) 

Regards,
Pockey

On Mon, 2010-07-12 at 13:21 +0800, Rex Tsai wrote:
> 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
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >