[Linux-aus] linux.conf.au 2014 Financials

[Silvia Pfeiffer]

On Sun, Jun 1, 2014 at 6:58 PM, Anthony Towns <aj at erisian.com.au> wrote:
> On 1 June 2014 16:54, Jessica Smith <jessica at itgrrl.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, Jun 1, 2014 at 11:49 AM, Joshua Hesketh <president at linux.org.au>
>> And I guess that an obvious follow-up question is to ask if a team bidding
>> on running an LCA feels that the only way they can run it is to outsource a
>> significant amount of the work to a commercial events manager (with the
>> inevitable overheads that will generate), should the committee award them
>> the bid? Additional oversight and a supporting sub-committee may not be
>> enough to offset that fundamental risk.
>
> FWIW, I didn't see any evidence that the events manager was an
> additional risk -- from what I saw they delivered what the LCA team
> expected. They're obviously an additional expense, and they're also an
> additional thing to manage, both of which are trade offs compared to
> the volunteer time that would otherwise have to be spent.
>
> From a budget pov, I think the comparison between 2013 and 2014 was
> fairly straightforward:
>
>  - 2013 rego was $400k - $100k for accom costs = $300k
>  - 2014 rego was $200k
>  - 2013/14 sponsorship was about the same
>
>  - total 2013 expenses excl accom was $371k
>  - total 2014 expenses was $360k
>
>  - 2013 had $50k profit
>  - $100k less income, $10k less expenses
>  - so 2014 had $40k loss
>
> Breaking down the expenses for comparison:
>
>  - 2013: transport + ghosts + travel national = $35k
>  - 2014: transport + ghosts + travel national = $29k
>  - 2013: venue + AV + storage + office = $68k
>  - 2014: venue + AV = $88k
>  - 2013: speakers int'l travel + speakers dinner = $77k
>  - 2014: speakers int'l travel + speakers dinner + speakers local travel = $52k
> (fixed costs about even)
>
> - 2013: food&drink + dinner = $91k
>  - 2014: catering + dinner + food&drink = $92k
> (total food costs about even)
>
>  - 2013: schwag + donation + printing = $80k
>  - 2014: schwag + partners = $34k
>  - 2014: events mgmt + accom = $51k
> (savings here covered the events mgmt)
>
> My conclusion was that 2014 ended up spending too much on catering
> compared to their rego intake -- ie, in 2013, 30c in the dollar of
> registration went to cover catering; while in 2014, it was 45c in the
> dollar (ie, a 50% increase). If it had been at the same rate, that
> would've meant spending $60k instead, which would've reduced the loss
> to ~$10k. My guess would be that having the food trucks around was
> probably a significant part of that.
>
> I think the rego prices for 2013 and 2014 were pretty similar (with
> the exception of early-bird professional prices?) so I'm presuming
> there was about a 30% drop in attendee numbers compared to Canberra.
> That seems mostly reasonable, given Canberra did fairly heavy
> self-promotion and was more convenient for more people.
>
> It's not clear to me what the 2014 crew could/should have done
> differently themselves -- cutting the food trucks would've made
> lunches a bunch more complicated I think; and (at least without
> digging into the details) nothing else seems like it had obvious extra
> savings to be made.
>
> Doing better forecasting/communication so the LA council weren't
> surprised that LCA turned out to make a loss would be a good thing,
> obviously, and seems in hand. That might be enough to get other people
> in the community to help with promotion and stuff so the
> attendance/revenue side of things is better, which would also be a
> win, obviously.

Thanks for this break-down. It really clarifies things and clearly
shows that the event manager expense was not the issue.

It looks a lot like there were just not the number of registrations.
This is in fact something that the community could have potentially
helped with had it been known beforehand.

So, everything that has been said seems to me that it is being dealth
with in the right way.

Thanks so much, council, LCA2014 organisers, and aj for being so
transparent about this!

Cheers,
Silvia.