[OSGeo-Conf] FOSS4G 2027 Q&A Stage 2 Bristol

Dennis Bauszus dbauszus at gmail.com
Fri Apr 3 08:16:38 PDT 2026 

Dear Conference Dev Committee;

I have updated the wiki in regards to the questions posted by you. Please
find the updated content of the wiki in this email.

I have cc'd Paul and Illya who will co-chair the event.

I have attached the updated budget ODS to reflect the changes.

Please let us know if you have any further questions.

Best,
Dennis Bauszus

https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Q%26A_Stage_2_BristolPaul Ramsey

   - Q: On the budget I am little surprised to see almost no expense lines
   outside of the venue and A/V. And the A/V seems quite low given (as noted
   in the bid) the generally high cost of doing video capture at professional
   quality over multiple tracks of a conference like this.
   - R: Please see the *A/V* item in the answers section.


   - Q: I am please to see the discount registration fee is set above the
   fixed costs per delegate, but I do not see a student fee? They usually end
   up less than cost, so must be managed a little during registration (can’t
   have too many).
   - R: Please see the *Student Tickets / Late Registration* item in the
   answers section.


   - Q: The conference venue fee seems to include lunch, but not any
   morning/breakfast beverage service?
   - R: Please see the *Catering* item in the answers section.

Alex Leith

I have a few suggestions:

   - Q: From our experience, we have about 1/3 registrations in our early
   bird phase, 1/3 in our mid phase, and 1/3 late. That is also to say, that I
   strongly recommend three tiers of tickets, early (or super early), regular
   (early) and late (regular). Essentially, a strong incentive to register
   early
   - R: Please see the *Student Tickets / Late Registration* item in the
   answers section.


   - Q: We had two types of cheap tickets, "student" and also "community
   contributor". The first is self-explanatory, the second required a brief
   justification, but we didn't police it.
   - R: Please see the *Student Tickets / Late Registration* item in the
   answers section.


   - I agree with Paul that AV is important, and can be expensive, and that
   ensuring that recordings (and hybrid/broadcast) works well may cost extra
   - R: Please see the *A/V* item in the answers section.


   - Some expenses are missing, for example, the dinner, the icebreaker,
   geochicas, b2b, any breakfast events (women in geo, for example).
   - R: Please see the *Social Events* items in the answers section.


   - I think the budget needs more work. I would be happy to share our
   budget and actuals spreadsheets from Auckland, noting that our attendance
   was only 400, they should be still a good benchmark.
   - R: We will provide an updated budget sheet to the conference_dev
   mailing list today 03/04/26.

Luca Delucchi

Dear Briston LOC, thanks a lot for the proposals, I have few questions
mainly related to budget

   - Q: Related to A/V you wrote 10000£, but for my experience usually they
   cost more, what is included in you proposals? All the rooms will be
   recorded?
   - R: Please see the *A/V* item in the answers section.


   - Q: There are no cost for the social events
   - R: Please see the *Social Events* items in the answers section.


   - Q: If I understood correctly the lunch price is included in the
   "Meeting room rental" record, this is including also coffee break at the
   mid morning/afternoon?
   - R: Please see the *Catering* item in the answers section.


   - Q: Do you plan to have conference T-Shirt? if yes there is no cost on
   the budget
   - R: Please see the *TShirts* item in the answers section.


   - Q: Cost for advertising is missing, but usually few thousands of euro
   are used (participating to conferences, some payed post or other activities)
   - R: Please the *Marketing* item in the answers section.

So the proposal is good, but the budget needs a little more work for my
point of view.
Dennis Bauszus

I will provide answers here since some of the questions are in regards to
the same items.

   - *A/V*: We have a quote from Bluestone AV a local company specialised
   on A/V for events. The quote is for £5,4326 which includes tax. Bluestone
   provide 9 cameras, microphones, mac books, and tripods, as well as 3
   engineers over the 3 days of the conference. We can hire more engineers if
   required so we left the budget open to £10,000. We believe that we are able
   to cover every conference session with the engineers and volunteers. We can
   stream either to a private YouTube channel, or Zoom. All streams will be
   recorded to be published later via the OSGeo YouTube channel.


   - *TShirts*: Shirts will be paid for extra. We are working with
   Spreadshirt and were able to produce printed shirts for as little as £12.
   Some delegates may opt for organic premium shirts to be printed while
   others are not so keen on a shirt. We added [£720/£960/£1200] for
   [60/80/100] shirts for sponsors, volunteers, and Travel Grant recipients in
   the budget.


   - *Student Tickets / Late Registration*: We added student tickets at
   £180, and late registration at £450. Early bird registration is £250, and
   the regular registration is £370. We will cap the student tickets at 100,
   which is 10% of the best capacity [1000]. We distribute the registration
   for the budget as 10% for Student and Late each, and %40 for Early Bird and
   Regular each.


   - *Catering*: The venue catering includes three servings of tea and
   coffee throughout the day, mini pastries on arrival, homemade cookies mid
   morning, a fresh fruit selection in the afternoon, and two courses chef's
   choice lunch with fruit juice.


   - *Social Events*: The B2B event will be after the setup of the
   exhibition space on Tuesday. There will be a drinks reception for which we
   budget [1200/1400/1600] depending on the attendance scenario. We budget
   £2000 for the GeoChicas / Women+ in Geospatial event. We budget £2500 for
   the Icebreaker event. As for the Gala Dinner. We would like this to be a
   ticketed event [£80] and budget for 15% of the attendance for tickets given
   to sponsors / travel grant / volunteers. This adds [£7200/£9600/£12000] to
   the expenses.


   - *Marketing*: We would like to reduce print waste and only plan for
   digital advertisement. The idea is to have a large screen in the foyer
   which we can borrow. We added £1000 for digital marketing to the budget.

We have adjusted the budget in regards to the above mentioned items. We
apply a multiplier to the expected sponsor revenue for the better and best
attendance scenarios. We expect a surplus of [£24413 / £35084 / £45756] and
would like to earmark £29450 for the Travel Grant.
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