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

[Vasile Craciunescu]

Dear Dennis,

Thank you for the updates. We have enough information to proceed with the voting (April 6-13).

Keep in touch,
Vasile

On 03/04/2026 18:16, Dennis Bauszus wrote:
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>       Dear Conference Dev Committee;
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>
> I have updated the wiki in regards to the questions posted by you. Please find the updated content of the wiki in this email.
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> I have cc'd Paul and Illya who will co-chair the event.
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> I have attached the updated budget ODS to reflect the changes.
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> Please let us know if you have any further questions.
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> Best,
> Dennis Bauszus
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>
>       https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Q%26A_Stage_2_Bristol
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>       Paul Ramsey
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>   * 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.
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>   * 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.
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>   * 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.
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>       Alex Leith
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> I have a few suggestions:
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>   * 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.
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>   * 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.
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>   * 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.
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>   * 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.
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>   * 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.
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>
>       Luca Delucchi
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> Dear Briston LOC, thanks a lot for the proposals, I have few questions mainly related to budget
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>   * 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.
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>   * Q: There are no cost for the social events
>   * R: Please see the *Social Events* items in the answers section.
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>   * 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.
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>   * 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.
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>   * 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.
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> So the proposal is good, but the budget needs a little more work for my point of view.
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>       Dennis Bauszus
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> I will provide answers here since some of the questions are in regards to the same items.
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>   * *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.
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>   * *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.
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>   * *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.
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>   * *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.
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>   * *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.
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>   * *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.
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> 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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