[OSGeo-Conf] Early Budgeting

[Paul Ramsey]

On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 6:49 AM, Venka <venka.osgeo at gmail.com> wrote:
> What I would like to know is a rough idea of
> costs involved (registration fee etc) both
> at Denver and Bogota.

This is an interesting question, but we have to be careful not to get
too detailed at the letters stage. In order to answer this question
with any specificity, a LOC would need to do the budget research on
venue, catering, AV, etc, which actually involves a lot of leg work.
We've been here before, and it's the full bid process. And if we
provide a budget template with historical numbers, the answer from all
LOCs will be "whatever the template says" and not very informative
(the bid from Beijing last time around was basically all the numbers
from 2007 that were in the template document).

I think we might have to content ourselves with questions about the
local community and organizing group, and in particular around
sponsorship possibilities? The revenue side, in other words, since
most budgets depend on about 30% of revenues coming from sponsorship,
so if that is missing deficit is almost guaranteed.

(That said, it's pretty amazing how much even prime venue space varies
in cost. Victoria cost about $35K for the whole center (which I hope
everyone will agree was a darn nice building), and pretty much every
venue since then has cost double that: it's the difference between an
"international" center and a regional one. Barcelona will be no
exception. Unfortunately the trade-off for getting that kind of deal
is being in a city like Victoria that is an extra hop away from major
international airports.)

P.