[OSGeo-Conf] FOSS4G 2014 Bid Q&A Period

[Andrew Ross]

Hi Jeroen,

On 07/02/2013 07:00 PM, Jeroen Ticheler wrote:
> Dear committee member,
> Although I'm not on the conf committee, I do have a few questions which I hope can be dealt with. They are not on the program, I hope to look into those as well, but thought I post these now. Both proposals are solid pieces of work, congratulations!
>
> Both submitters (and committee members):
> - Do we have statistics on how many viewers we have / had for the AV streaming of conference presentations? I notice that in both proposals the streaming services are quite expensive (Portland 67.500$, Washington 50.000$) although I'm not sure the Washington number includes other facilities as well?
> I think it is relevant to understand if this investment in streaming video is worth the money or that money would be better spend in another way / could lower the registration fees.
> An option is also to record plenary presentations instead of all sessions?

Confirmed, the staff budget as part of the Washington D.C. budget 
includes a number of things like web development, sponsorship/accounts 
receivable, registration, web infrastructure, and more.

Typically the videos are watched between 250 and 750 times each. Some 
are very popular and stretch into thousands of views each.

While doing the videos is a modest expense, the value to attendees is 
significant. It's like they can suddenly enjoy many times the number of 
talks. The benefit to the wider community is similarly significant. For 
every person in the room, roughly 10 times that many see the video.

To give you an idea... FOSS4G 2009 & 2011 were recorded for around $5K 
each. In my experience this is roughly an order of magnitude less than 
other options.

Being able to record off-line is also a very important differentiator. I 
wouldn't recommend putting more pressure on the internet at the conference.

> Portland:
> - It looks like there is an error in the formula for "Credit Card Fees (eventbrite)".
> - Do workshop presenters receive a complementary registration for their efforts? This used to be good practice but was lost for the FOSS4G2013 conference. I see they are part of the Washington proposal :-)
> - It would be nice to offer the Swag as options for sponsoring
> - It may make sense to also budget for ~650 attendees?
>
> Washington:
> - No money for marketing

Thanks for asking about this. We'll make the best possible use of the 
resources available to us at the Foundation & our committee members' 
organizations. There's a lot we can do that won't show up in the budget 
here. As just one example, when we organize community events on the east 
coast, that provides a fantastic opportunity to promote the conference 
and build awareness. Our committee members and supporters are based in 
the major east coast cities.

I'll have to talk with the Foundation's VP of Marketing to confirm, but 
it may be possible to promote the event on Eclipse.org, which receives 
2M+ visitors per day.

In terms of actual budget spend it was hard to put a number that had any 
meaning at this point, we'll spend judiciously based on the needs at the 
time. It is unlikely to be material to the budget.

> - Lunch and breaks seems pretty expensive at 60$ + 35$ /person/day while the conference center is very cheap. Are they part of a package deal?

That's right. Once we surpass the minimum food and beverage requirement 
there is no charge for the rooms we've requested. High food prices are 
typical for conference venues. We may be able to negotiate them down 
once we're negotiating the contract for real. If we can, and sponsorship 
is looking good (which is crucial!), lowering registration may be possible.

> - What happens with the net profit or loss beyond the OSGeo contribution?

The Eclipse Foundation is prepared to cover the loss. OSGeo would not be 
expected to do so.

Should the event be more successful than the budget predicts, there will 
be some balancing of re-investing to enhance priority areas as 
determined by the committee.

Should there be modest profit beyond that, the Foundation humbly 
requests it.

For what it's worth, I don't think they'll mind me sharing that we did 
ask advice from Daniel Morissette & Peter Batty about the best way to 
approach this. The advice was to keep it simple & clear which I hope 
we've accomplished.

> - Operations total cost is quite high. This includes "Meeting planner fee" and EF Staff and travel. Are these two complementary? And if so, could that be simplified to reduce the operations budget?

Very good question. Thanks again.

We felt it was important to be clear and up front what the actual costs 
are as best we can determine them. They may be a little bit (but not 
excessively) cautious as is appropriate at this stage. The alternative, 
to under represent them and project a larger profit, wasn't something we 
were comfortable with. We humbly hope this approach is acceptable to the 
committee.

> - It is unfortunate a number of budget items are still TBD, making comparison with the budget of Portland more complicated.

Great comment. Please let me explain. As per the comments in the budget 
TBD items such as the Zoo party, Icebreaker, and closing party are sold 
at cost. Any revenue would be matched by an equal and opposite expense. 
For this reason they are revenue neutral and we left them as TBD to 
allow focusing on the other factors.

> Cheers,
> Jeroen
>
>
> On 2 jul. 2013, at 21:10, Paul Ramsey <pramsey at cleverelephant.ca> wrote:
>
>> Dear conference committee members,
>>
>> We have received the full bid documents from Portland, OR and
>> Washington, DC. It now fall to *you* to review those documents and ask
>> the questions you have of the bidders.
>>
>> http://svn.osgeo.org/osgeo/foss4g/proposals/2014/2014_Proposal_Portland.pdf
>> http://svn.osgeo.org/osgeo/foss4g/proposals/2014/2014_Proposal_Portland_Budget.xls
>>
>> http://svn.osgeo.org/osgeo/foss4g/proposals/2014/2014_Proposal_Washington.pdf
>> http://svn.osgeo.org/osgeo/foss4g/proposals/2014/2014_Proposal_Washington_Budget.xlsx
>>
>> The Q&A period is very *short* so please read and question to bidders ASAP.
>>
>> http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G_2014_Bid_Process#Bid_Process
>>
>> Post your questions and look for responses on conference_dev.
>>
>> Yours,
>>
>> Paul
>> 2014 RFP Coordinator
>> _______________________________________________
>> Conference_dev mailing list
>> Conference_dev at lists.osgeo.org
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