Hi Emmanuele On 2014-05-20 12:07, Emmanuele Bassi <ebassi gmail com> wrote:
On 20 May 2014 11:36, David King <amigadave amigadave com> wrote:Thanks for pointing this out. As you can see from the income and expenses in the preliminary 2013 annual report, the Desktop Summit (co-located event with KDE) has traditionally been a much more profitable event for the Foundation than GUADEC. https://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeMarketing/AnnualReport/AnnualReport2014/Financesthat is a naive intepretation of the results of co-located desktop summit. the desktop summits have been, historically, *less* profitable than GUADEC for the foundation; the only reason why the 2011 one looks more profitable when compared to the last two GUADECs is because the last two GUADECs were in absolute terms less profitable; we spend more money in getting more people at GUADEC, and we get fewer sponsors.
I do not think that is what the figures in the annual report show. The 2009 Desktop Summit income is shown under 2010 (as mentioned underneath the income table) and was ~$162 000. The expense for that year is listed in the 2009 annual report, and is ~$75 000. The 2011 Desktop Summit income was ~$84 000 and the expenses were ~$30 000. To summarise, the net income from the GUADEC/Desktop Summits is as follows:
* 2009 Desktop Summit: $87 000 * 2010 GUADEC: -$49 000 * 2011 Desktop Summit: $54 000 * 2012 GUADEC: $3 000The figure for the 2010 GUADEC does not look right, so I am guessing that there is a mistake in the annual report figures. Kat (or a current board member with access to the raw figures), can you clarify the numbers? Also, preliminary numbers for the 2013 GUADEC would be very useful, if they are available.
there's no guarantee we'd have more sponsors by co-locating GUADEC with aKademy, and we'd still have to split the revenue of the conference.
That is correct, but even with the revenue split between GNOME and KDE, the previous Desktop Summits seem much more profitable than GUADEC. It would be good to hear about the experience from the KDE side also, to see whether their experience is similar to that of the Foundation.
on top of that, there are the various issues that co-locating or flagship conference entail, and that were discussed *at length* after the 2009 and 2011 desktop summits.
Presumably, you are referring to public discussions on foundation-list (or other mailing lists)? I would have to look into threads discussing those issues again, as it has been some time since I read them.
Even if a future Desktop Summit would be focused purely on co-location (as opposed to co-operation), it should reduce the costs of the event, and bring in more money for GNOME.that's wishful thinking.
I only mentioned that co-location "should" reduce costs, not that it "would". I do not think that is a particularly wishful idea, and the available figures suggest that co-location has been financially successful in the past. There are, of course, many other factors that make an event as a whole a success.
if we ever decided to cut costs on GUADEC by co-locating it, I'd probably look into co-locating it with a conference that is more in line with GNOME than aKademy. for downstream, there's the SUSE conference or the Fedora Flock; for accessing the commercial side there's the Linux Foundation. we could also look into EFF or FSF Europe events, given the alignment of the interests.
Those are good suggestions, thanks. I did not intend to say that we should only consider co-locating a Desktop Summit with KDE, merely that the approach has been successful (depending on your definition of that term) before.
It has worked well twice before, so I think that any practical obstacles can be overcome.I contend the idea that it (the desktop summit) worked "well" in any way, shape, or form.
It seems to have worked well financially. I attended both conferences, and enjoyed the experience immensely, as well as finding it productive. I am sure many other people did also, based on blog posts and email threads at the time. I have also been to several GUADECs, and I have found those events enjoyable and productive too.
I think that your contention that the Desktop Summits did not work well in any way is overly dismissive of the work that the organisers put in, and I do not think that it is a fair representation of the success of the events.
we've been doing much more solid work with the freedesktop.org summit/hackfests than we ever did with the desktop summits, both in terms of tangible results and community outreach.
To me, those serve a different focus than a co-located Desktop Summit. A co-located Summit should help to reduce costs. The freedesktop.org summits have been excellent at driving collaboration between projects, and I see them as complementary to a flagship conference. I do not think that the freedesktop.org events should be folded into a co-located Desktop Summit.
-- http://amigadave.com/
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature