Re: [guadec-list] Registration for GUADEC 2017: request for opinions & testing

[Sam Thursfield <ssssam gmail com>]

Hi Benjamin, cheers for all the info. I'll dig into the config etc.
later on, but I can reply to a few bits now

On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 6:27 PM, Benjamin Berg
<benjamin sipsolutions net> wrote:
> >   * Will we offer a free T-shirt for donations over £100/€100?
>
> btw. we called it "fee" last year as we couldn't book it as a
> "donation" properly. Also if it was an actual donation, then any offer
> like a t-shirt is illegal.

OK; I guess this is something to discuss with tax experts before we launch it.

> >   * Will we give a 50% refund for cancellations on fees before a
> >     certain date, and what date?
>
> We didn't have any cancellations and this specific regulation was
> chosen rather randomly to be honest.
>
> I think you should decide this based on what cancellation policy makes
> sense with regard to the accommodation booking.

For accommodation, the problem is we have to front the cost of the
rooms and if any of them are empty we'll lose money. So I think the
cancellation policy for those will be "ask us", and we can decide case
by case based on whether we have someone else to take on the room.

Perhaps we can just change this to "your fee can be returned (minus
payment processing costs) if you cannot attend the conference, contact
us on guadec-organization gnome org before 1st July 2017."  The
deadline there is chosen just because we'll be really busy in the last
month :-)

...

> Yep, as said above, choose whatever makes sense with regard to
> accommodation. Though maybe another incentive like a 10% discount on
> the accommodation for "early bird" registrations could also work.


I thought about this, but it gets kinda complicated. Right now we're
planning to sell the rooms at cost price, so we would lose quite a bit
of cash offering a 10% discount. And later if the rooms aren't
selling, increasing the price by 10% is probably not going to help :-)

> Oh, I think last year we may have had people wiring money to the Wau
> Holland Stiftung in Germany. It means the contribution bypasses the
> GUADEC budget, but it has the advantage of being tax deductible[1].
>
> If people realize this is possible, it might happen more often that
> people (i.e. "hobbyists") select "0€" but wire 40€ to WHS.

Did the Wau Holland Stiftung pass this money on to GNOME, or were
those people donating *to* the Wau Holland Stuftung?

I was thinking the other day, I made a change to regcfp that prevents
€0 donations... but then I started wondering how that works for
volunteers, who still need to register but should probably not have to
pay a registration fee.

>  * Maybe re-add a note about who is the legal host?
>   (Personally I wanted that to make it clear one cannot sue us in the
>   US.)

I think the legal host is the GNOME Foundation this year, they are the
ones who signed the contract with the venue. I guess we should discuss
this with a law expert though.

I  think I agree with all your other suggestions, I'll implement them
in my test instance early next week.

Thanks!
Sam