(...) > For the instalments: has DebConf usually raised cash so quickly and so > far in advance? I have previously heard that most cash comes 1 month > before DebConf.
Right, in some cases we have even had to get individuals to loan us large amounts of money to pay the missing money to the hotels. It is obviously wrong — But that's the only option we have had in the past (due to a sponsor committing to a certain date but not actually sending the resources). > - when things like this are done on `credit', it can become harder to > track, e.g. if 400 people show up and start sleeping/camping, Le Camp > will rightfully add that to the bill and may only discover later that we > only raised enough money to pay for 320 sleeping on site. By then, it > might be too late to fix it, because the people have gone and nobody can > ask for them to pay a registration fee or meal supplement (and by the > sounds of things, most people wouldn't want to pay either) Well, if it falls on our shoulders to make sure additional (not registered or whatever) people don't sleep with us, we must comply. And that has always been the case. We allow extra people to come to work or be part of the talks, but at night we do try not to host additional people. I have requested people to leave for their accomodations (somebody wanted to stay as he was staying at a far away place) to avoid us trouble in the past. > - there is also the general concept that some people feel `debt is just > bad' or `debt always creates risk'. When people are under pressure and > debt is available, sometimes people just don't find the right balance > (either deliberately, or purely in error, or through misinformation, or > just from trying to please 300 people and losing track of the budget). > The converse argument is that we should only do things if we have money > to pay for them. When we sign a contract, we are in debt. It has always been the case. We want always to avoid being more in debt than what we can cover, but we have managed decently — I don't think I managed to follow your reasoning here. > We could still do this with Le Camp: we just tell them > on day 1 `we raised another 50k, here it is, you now have 110k, don't > expect any more, feed us until the account is empty and then we'll start > scavenging'. However, this is not very elegant and it may be better to > have a more flexible structure that allows us to control the way we > ration the money if there is a shortfall. I don't think that either Le Camp, Interlaken or any other place would want to host us under such premises. They have to plan ahead on what they will be buying, on the amount of people that will be working, on the general logistics. And I don't see the current contract any different from previous years' — Except in the amounts we will have to come up with. _______________________________________________ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
