[Linux-aus] Treasurers Report 2012

[Anthony Towns]

On 25 January 2013 20:57, Joshua Hesketh <josh at nitrotech.org> wrote:
> Yes this would have been remaining expenses not in the 2011 budget. You can
> look at both of the budgets for comparison, but I also have a spreadsheet
> attached that does a nice comparison of all the areas.

Hmm, that's got some interesting info.

Total income over three years and three weeks has been just under $2M,
which is split:

  63% - conference regos
  21% - Australian sponsorship
  14% - International sponsorship
   2% - Interest
   0% - Merch sales (0.09% rounded down)

That seems like a pretty respectable split to me. I'm impressed the
"local" sponsorship is so high, even if that's including a lot of
local subsiduaries of multinationals.

Expenses meanwhile:

Core activities: (41.8%)

  16.04%	Venue - Hire
   5.65%	AV and Network Equipment
   5.44%	Travel - International
   3.59%	Speakers Travel - International
   1.87%	Travel - National
   1.87%	Tansport buses, taxis etc
   1.67%	Ghosts
   1.66%	Third Party Training
   1.57%	Server
   1.34%	Speakers Accomodation
   1.09%	Grants - Other

Luxuries: (34.55%)

  13.05%	Merchandise and Schwag
   7.36%	Venue - Catering
   6.20%	Conference Dinner
   4.59%	Food & Drink
   1.95%	Speakers Dinner
   1.40%	Donation

Accounts directly for income: (11.25%)

   8.27%	Conference Accommodation
   2.98%	Networking Event

Necessary overhead: (2.45%)

   1.38%	Storage Rental
   1.07%	Office Expenses

The remaining 10% are of items that individually account for less than
1% each. Insurance, zookeepr hackfest, merchant fees, local speakers
travel...

So, bugger me, we spend a lot on merch and swag. Almost as much as on
venues? Is that a bit crazy, especially when we basically don't sell
any independently? Do we really think schwag adds as much value to LCA
as having a venue, or three times the value of recordings, or about
twice the value of covering speakers costs? Or between two and five
times the grants budget? Wow.

Nice that (a) pretty much all the big ticket items are "on point" and
there's no "huh? you shouldn't be paying $50,000 for fax rental..."
sort of stuff in there (touch wood), and that (b) the "luxury" stuff
(that you could plausibly argue doesn't add anything to what LA's
actually about) is thoroughly paid for by attendee's directly (as
opposed to hitting up sponsors for lotsa money and spending it all on
gala dinners and champagne).

Cheers,
aj

-- 
Anthony Towns <aj at erisian.com.au>