[Aust-NZ] Meeting to review budget

[Tim Bowden]

On Thu, 2007-12-20 at 14:30 +1100, Cameron Shorter wrote:
> Kerry,
> When you are back from holidays, could we please have a meeting, 
> primarily between you me and Jeff to walk through the line items in the 
> budget you have put together.
> 
> I'd like to see where we can reduce the budget.
> In particular:
> * Tim suggested that we change from a 5 day conference to 4 days + a 
> code sprint. I'm assuming room requirements for a code sprint should be 
> minimal and not too costly. So reducing 1 day should save us ~ 20%.

If we look at the Victoria conf, It's a *3* day conf, plus a tutorials
day first up (which costs extra- have to check again how much, but I
think it was about $100 - 150 or so).  The code sprint does have minimal
requiremets, so it shouldn't add much to the cost.  The first day
(tutorials) we won't need the large hall, just breakout rooms suitable
to be turned into labs so that should also help contain costs.

We haven't yet factored in costs for pc hire for the tutorials/labs.
Given that everyone will have a laptop anyway, there is some possibility
to utilise live disks.  If so we would have to have the base system
available very early on for testing, and we would be restricting those
presenters who preferred using a windows base (and that will not be
uncommon).  We will also be creating a problem when there are issues
with delegates laptops running the live disks.  That's not going to be
pretty if we go down that road.

I'd also like to see the govt forum held during the conf- The content
there will by and large be part of the conf anyway.  I see it as a
packaging exercise to help govt gis people sell the value of the conf to
their big bosses, rather than generating substantial new content for the
conf.  Thoughts?

> 
> * I expect we should be able to reduce AV costs - particularly at the UNSW.
> 
> * Jeff suggests we should be able to reduce internet costs based upon 
> his contacts.
> 
> * I'm wondering whether we need incidentals for delegates like 
> "Satchel", glossy program, etc.
> 
> * I expect we can bring down the cost of the conference dinner.

I'm not sure we need to reduce it /too/ much.  If we are to show off
Sydney's greatest asset- the harbour, I think it's worth spending
something.  It's an extra that most international visitors will be
willing to shell out for.

Are there any thoughts on suitably entertaining characters that might be
available at not too much of a premium for plenary sessions?

Regards,
Tim

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