Re: [guadec-list] Guadec Planning Meeting Notes - 20th January 2007

["Quim Gil" <quimgil gmail com>]

On 1/31/07, Thomas Wood <thos gnome org> wrote:

>      * It would be useful to produce a list of things that we know we
>        need to spend money on and have a rough idea of how much it might
>        cost

I will send you the last version of the GUADEC2006 accounts I have. We
will make it public, but I want to check first with Chema that the
numbers are correct. I will also blog about where I think (from the
2006 experience) that money can be saved and better spent.


> Catering

Glynn warned us last year and is warning you this year. He is right,
this is a complex issue. I would recommend:

a) Leave the service altogether to the caterers available in the
venue, if you find that the relation price/quality is good. If you do
so you need to arrange the deal and make sure you have the money to
pay. There must be always a vegetable option (we had about >25% in
Vilanova and nobody complained) and the easiest is to avoid pork meat
at all.

b) If a) is not possible or too risky, solve with vouchers/money the
problem for people requesting meals sponsorship. Consider sponsor
dinners as well if you have the budget for that. The impact of that
money is not big if you are in the numbers of last GUADEC, and I agree
some people really need it.

c) Be *really* careful if you are making people pay meals together
with inscriptions. It can be a mess if not properly managed. If I
would be in February 2006 now I would have spent less money in i.e.
bags and I would have tried to fully sponsor meals instead. In order
to make such decisions you need to have the money first, though.

d) In any case try to find the perfect solution for the Core days,
when most of the registered people will be in place and willing less
to go away, sleep till late, make a trip to London... Planning meals
for non-Core days is much more complicated and at least myself feel
some kind of pain seeing how paid and cooked food goes to the waste
because just a % of the people came that day.

>      * Booking out a youth hostel may be a last resort, but there were
>        concerns about security.

People with less resources tend to worry less about security (if you
mean having your cool gadget stolen). There must be a place for those
willing to pay few-to-nothing for accommodation. You know better than
anyone if this place is the youth hostel or a cheap hotel around.

Anyway, if you are aiming to keep the amount of people sponsored in
2006 (more or less) you will need to negotiate a group accommodation
with someone.


>      * Gnome branded laptop stickers was one idea of something novel and
>        interesting people may appreciate

They are planned for the GNOME Store - see
http://live.gnome.org/GnomeWeb/GnomeStore

It would be really useful if GUADEC2007 marketing purchases were done
in coordination with the GNOME Store, otherwise the store itself
looses a lot of sense.

Yes, I know such store doesn exist today. In fact it exists as
backend, we are still working in the frontend. We can start talking
about offer and prices if you want. As you see in the wiki page,
T-shirts, Polo shirts, Stickers and Mugs are already in the queue of
production. The more the GNOME Store can sell to customer GUADEC the
better we will be able to serve individual customers due to wholesale
prices and etc.


>      * Branded USB drives were another idea

We got a budget for those as well. We decided to leave it for later at
the GNOME Store since we didn see them as something viable by their
own. However, everything changes if you decide to ask for a quote for
300 or so.

>      * Possibility of using Spreadshirt to print t-shirts.

Killermundi please (our provider behing the GNOME shop)


>      * Possibility of polo shirts for helpers?

The sooner you know your helpers the better you will able to provide
them a nice polo shirt fitting in their contributing bodies. Ask Andy
what red t-shirt he got at Vilanova... (and he was one of the first
volunteers to join the team!! but we followed alphabetical order in
the "cerimony" and Wingo... you know).

>            o  Anything more than £100 would need to be invoiced.

Please study *carefully* all the expenses relating to sponsored people
and invited speakers. There is a lot of money invested in travel and
accommodation. I don't know how is the system in UK, but in Spain we
could have saved a lot of time/money with a clear policy for
requesting invoices (not just plain tickets) in order to recover the
VAT.

For the Call for Participation we simply used the Flexinode module in
Drupal, that allows to define the form elements of a page.

--
Quim Gil /// http://desdeamericaconamor.org