🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <56@quark.ansto.gov.au> frank@iris.ansto.gov.au (Frank Crawford) writes:
>Again if you want a copy let me know your FAX number or postal address
>and I'll send it.
>

Fax 692 3838

>Your figures are close but not quite right, firstly it was $250/sq m
>(my mistake) so that brings it down to $458625 + $33750 in sponsorship.

Ok, that totals $492375

>The expenses are more complicated, but come to $205412.76, and includes
>4 days hire of the exhibition hall (1 day to move in and set up), 
>$62783 for carpets stands, etc, $66273 for marketing (for the exhibition
>not the conference - you might not have noticed it but it was going on
>through out the preceeding year).

$205412.76 expenses, $62783 for carpets and stands (I have no idea
wether this is a good number but it is the number). By "stands" you
actually means partitions, the exhibitors were responsible for their
stands, AUUG just provides carpet, partitions, 2 flood lights and a
power socket. The rest - phones, more power, lights , groovy stands
is borne by the exhibitor.
$66273 for marketing, I guess this includes the ads in the press etc.
Sounds ok to me. Adds up to $129056. That only leaves $76356.76
for the rest, I guess this is exhibition hall hire (4x9555 = $38220).
So maybe the rest is for security guards, reception people etc ($38136.76)

>That left a profit of $286962.24 for the exhibition, however it isn't
>all ours.  For a number of years the exhibition has been organised by
>ACMS and from the exhibition we split the profit 70% ACMS / 30% AUUG
>(which is reasonably fair, considering we do no work for it).

Ok we pay ACMS a minimum of $200000 to organise the Winter AUUG.
(Unless they are paid a portion of the marketing costs).

>This left AUUG with a profit from the exhibition of $99588.67.

>Unfortunately you forgot all about the food you ate, the proceedings you

Nope, I didn't I just thought it would be pretty boring posting the
numbers, I just wanted the numbers to be supplied so I can work out
where the money is spent.

>received and other bits and pieces, all charged at Darling Harbours
>rates.  The dinner was $70/head, lunches, etc, $140/head, printing and

I used to allocate $100/head for the dinner ... what does the
corporate sponsorship of the dinners return?
$140/head for 3 rather mediocre lunches ($46 each) seems a bit steep,
we should have just booked out some restaurants in Chinatown....

>other freebies $70/head + some other bits, giving a total of $343/head
>out of a members fee of $395.

What were the freebies, the proceedings, the T-shirt and ...

>Some of the other expenses include ~$15000 for meeting room hire (you
>forgot the tutorials), $36000 for speaker support (including airfare

I didn't realise the tuorials were run as a charitable work, I had
assumed that since you charged for them, they would go some part
of the way to paying for themselves, I ignored them on the basis that
they should have broken even.

>and accomodation for people such as Rob Pike and Evi Nemeth, free
>attendance to all speakers, and making slides).

How much of this $36000 was speaker support and how much slides?
How many invited speakers, what did you provide, airfares and
a weeks accomodation?

>Taken all together the income from the conference was $190116.15 and
>the expenses were $273901.00.  This gave us a loss of $83784.85 for the
>conference, and a profit of $15787.64 over both events.

Sounds like a good reason to overhaul the way the conference is organised.

>However that isn't the end of the story, AUUG also had a stand in the
>exhibition and although we didn't have to pay for the space, we did have
>to pay for the stand itself, hiring people and a number of other items.
>These came to a bit over $10000 which gave a "profit" of less than
>$5000.  This figure is not exact because there were somethings related
>to the AUUG stand that are hard to allocate.  Also at the time of
>printing the final report there were still some organisations owing
>money, which (if it was all collected) would give us around $10000.

Hmm, if the stand space was free, and I seem to recall that
it only used "standard" partitions and a couple of dodgy signs
I would have to guess that the stand overheads were low, now staffing
it with 2 people at $50/hour (which is much more than you paid but lets
be conservative) = $3000, so were did the other $7k go?

>
>To give this some perspective, if attendence had of been our budgetted
>figure of 450, we would have made a profit from the conference and
>exhibition of ~$50000.

Fine, so why does the latest AUUGN report that attendance was 499,
what happened? Too many people turned up?

>>>There are many other points that add to it, but, certainly the committee is
>>>very concerned about the same matter.
>>>
>>
>>Send me the data and I will match it up with the numbers that the
>>Exhibition Center kindly mails out to anyone that enquires ....
>>Oh by the way. my numbers could be wrong, they are effective from
>>July 1992, so maybe they are inflated some what, it would have been a
>>little cheaper last year.
>
>As you should see from above, your numbers are not wrong, they just
>leave out many items.

I didn't bother adding the rest, though I am aware of them, I just don't
have enough info without the "official" numbers to guess what they
cost. I do however have enough information to say that the excuse
for no profit in '91 Winter AUUG that is commonly stated i.e.
Darling Harbour is very expensive, is not the answer.
I will leave it to another article to reply to Chris's request
for some constructive suggestions on how to change the running
of the AUUG, thanks for posting these numbers, they are probably
enough to get me started, but I would appreciate a Fax of the full
report to the above number.