Dear Yao,
> > I would like to see the explicit calculations and assumptions
> > the went into this figure, including estimates of any error bars.
> > This would lead to upper and lower bounds for the total budget.
[..]
> 294 people completed registration
> 221 requested accommodation
> 50 people paid by themselves
Thanks, so these are objective, known numbers...
> Since our registration ison your reasoning for still open, we can estimate
> 350-400
> people where 75% of people (262-300) requested accommodation.
.. but it is still unclear on your reasoning for your 350-400
estimation. Is it based on something like registration "timelines"
seen at previous DebConfs, or...?
Obviously we don't know the number and nobody is going to hold you
to it (!) but given that it meaningfully affects the entire budget,
we surely just can't just be guessing at it or at least we should be
explicit that we are doing that.
We certainly should not be adding any component of wishful
thinking — simply adding people to this number won't make
people magically turn up.
(Again the idea is to identify any potential risks in advance so
that we can plan for them, rather than any comment on your
advertising or organisational skills!)
> However this list of budget overestimated the attendees paid by
> themselves (45% of attendees were used in estimation).
(I don't follow this, sorry)
> T-shirts are estimated in 500 normal + 100 for orga + 100 for video
> team. The overestimation of 100 t-shirts comes from the fact that some
> people wants to change the shirt size on site. Also, t-shirts can be
> sold in other Debian events as souvenir as well.
I've spoken to a number of people who have held t-shirts and other
related merchandise for Debian in the past (and have since
stopped). They would warn you that are overestimating or
trivialising the burdens of managing and storing such an inventory.
This will be compounded here by the t-shirts being event/date/year
specific and, given you concede they will be rejected sizes, you
will likely have an unrepresentative distribution of "sized" stock
too thus making it harder to shift later.
> > > Also, NCHC (National Center of High-performance Computing) and III
> > > (Institute for Information Industry) funds are not yet included. NCHC
> > > promised us that they can reimburse expenses
[..]
> The government agencies like NCHC and III cannot "sponsor" or "fund" us,
> but they can "reimburse" our expenses under certain categories.
I'm afraid I don't understand the arrangement. Using informal
language here, we can spend money on DC18 and ask them for it? (What
are the limits?)
Best wishes,
--
,''`.
: :' : Chris Lamb
`. `'` la...@debian.org / chris-lamb.co.uk
`-
