Re: No GTK+ Hackfest this year

[Behdad Esfahbod <behdad behdad org>]

On 03/25/2009 07:37 PM, Alberto Ruiz wrote:

> Behdad, do we have an estimate of how much money the former one costed
> (including accomodation, and travel expenses)?
>
> It would be interesting to have that information at hand to figure out
> how much money should be raised so that the Foundation could afford
> it.

According to my notes:

- Sponsorship money received: 7500 USD + 10236 Euros

- Expenses:

  * 960 Euros + 9800 USD: flight+train for 13 people

  * 5870 Euros: accommodation/venue for ~28 people for a week

  * 1890 Euros: food (breakfast, snacks, three dinner+parties)

  * 900 Euros: misc expenses (tshirts, chairs, power strips, flipcharts, 
markers, video cassettes, etc)

That means about 15 people's airfare was covered by their employers.

This year we had a very generous offer form TIS Innovation Park in Bolzano 
(http://www.tis.bz.it/) and had booked rooms in a decent hostel for very very 
reasonable price.  That would could cut the accommodation+misc+food costs way 
down.  However, I expect we'd need to pay for more airfare as I expect 
companies not being able to send a large delegation like they did last year.

That said, the sponsorship offers we received this year was only about 10% of 
last years, leaving the other 90% to the Foundation to cover, which is really 
hard given that for that amount, there are things more urgent to do.  For 
example, the recent push to hire a part-time sysadmin.

Anyway, tough times, make more a more conservative spending plan, be it for 
foundations or the companies.  By organizing smaller hackfests around other 
events we can get more done for the buck.  As nice as it is to have everyone 
in the same room working together for a week, it seems to be in the best 
interest of the parties involved to postpone such an event for now.

Hope that helps,

behdad