🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <4465@cluster.cs.su.oz.au> yar@cluster.cs.su.oz (Ray Loyzaga) writes:
>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

Thank you. I'll send it today.

...
>
>$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.

I'm not sure of the details, but that would be correct.  It is the only
expense related directly to the exhibition area.

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

If by marketing you mean the $66273 above then yes they paid a portion
of that as well.

...
>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....

Probably, but the vendors (and possibly also Darling Harbour) would be
upset.  They claim to want people wandering around the area, not off
elsewhere for lunch.

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

I can't remember all of them either, but they also included the bag and the
folder (and anything you buy is a minimum of about $5).

>>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.

They were supposed to make a profit, but for a number of reasons (mainly
lack of number caused by ??? - fill in your own reasons, many have been
suggested) they didn't.  Also many of the expenses related to the
tutorials are lumped in with the rest of the conference.

>>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?

The speaker support/expenses included free registration.  For 37
speakers that comes to $14615 alone.  Of these there were 2 (from
memory) that were totally sponsored by AUUG (economy airfare,
accomodation, etc), another 1 or 2 that had some expenses paid by AUUG
(the rest by vendors, etc) and the rest were either vendor sponsored or
paid by themselves.  Certainly the slides were expensive, but I have no
figures ($5000-$10000 from the memory of quotes - all the bills are
passed directly to ACMS to simplify accounting).

>>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.

Maybe, but how do you want to overhaul it and who is going to do all the
work?

>>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?

Your memory is not correct, or didn't you look up at the overhead
banner?  The cost of the stand was around $8000 (although I'm not
convinced that it was money well spent, it was agreed to early on when
we assumed we would make a good profit).

>>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?

You're a victim of marketing statements.  My figures are based on
registered conference attendees, the 499 includes others, such as
exhibitors (66), some press, etc (20).  The extras don't pay, and don't get
all the benefits.  There were also some cancellations which are counted
in total and subtracted from the conference total.

>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.

You are correct in saying that "Darling Harbour is expensive" is not the
full story, but compounded with other problems (such as late mailouts),
making other "one off expenses", etc. it magnifies any costs.  Remember
that when you talk about running an exhibition at Darling Harbour there
are many other expectations about what you will do that, such as the
level of advertising and quality of production.  Running a conference
where you expect everyone to use an OHP is very different to one where
everyone expects to use slides.

We certainly are interested in suggestions on how to change the running
of the AUUG conferences.

							Frank Crawford
							AUUG Treasurer

P.S. To those people who told me my mailer was broken, thank you.  A
recent system upgrade broke my existing sendmail.cf.