[LGM] 2011/2012

[a.l.e]

hi dave,

> There are a bunch of conflicting things here - too much time spent
> collecting little money, but we have no problem reimbursing project
> members who ask, but we have too many people participating in projects
> asking... perhaps you should define what you mean by "project members"?

i try to be a bit clearer... let's see if i succeed in it...

as far i can tell, the project members like the idea of the traveling 
expenses being refunded, but at the end of the LGM, relative few of them 
make the step and ask for a refund (i think that this year about 20 
people asked for a refund before the deadline).
on the other side, we have several people who are not part of a LG 
project, who propose a talk under the condition that their traveling 
expenses gets sponsored (sometimes in advance and in some cases they 
also want to be reimbursed of their lodging and food expenses).
those people tend to make the LGM much more interesting but on the 
finance side they are a bit of a challenge for us. some of them don't 
show up because we refuse to promise in advance the full sponsoring of 
their costs.

i don't know exactly how much money we could raise for this year's LGM. 
it's certainly not much, but probably almost enough for those 20 people 
(we will probably have to take some money out of the reserves...).


the other issue i wanted to raise was: in my eyes we are spending too 
much time and energy to raise little money (basically: i have the 
feeling that if the people who are involved in raising the money would 
put the costs of their hours in the LGM bank account, we would probably 
have as much money as gets raised by their effort... it's probably not 
100% correct, but i hope you get the idea...).
(and i'm excluding the few bigger sponsors which give us a substantial 
amount of money with little effort from our part)


> Until you have gone&  tried to sell the conference to people&  get
> sponsorship (yes, that's what it is, sales) you can't really speak to
> how much time it takes or how hard it is. I remember the first year I
> ran the Pledgie campaign, I spent a lot of time selling te campaign
> afterwards (blogs, mailing list posts, private emails to people I
> thought might donate) - it paid off beautifully, the community was the
> biggest sponsor that year. Inside the GIMP, a nulber of people (3 or 4
> at least) criticised me for pushing it too hard and (in their words)
> "spamming" their list.
>
>
>
> You say that many Pledgie donors were project members... go back to that
> first one&  see how many GIMP developers there were.
>
> Then again, the GIMP guys think they're rich, because of the donation
> program which I set up a few years ago, and which generated them a few
> grand in donations every year. LGM is their only opportunity to spend it
> every year, and this year, they didn't even spend one cent on the
> conference because there was no-one from the GIMP developers going.
>
>
> Now, ask yourself, who is going to put time into raising funds for
> people who are this ungrateful?

sorry, i got lost. who is ungrateful to whom? the Gimp folks to you as a 
LGM 1 organizer?
the Gimp folks to the last LGM? the last LGM to the Gimp folks?


however, one idea which i extract from your sentences above (and we 
already discussed with louis): should we help (and sollecit) the 
projects to raise their own money for funding the traveling to the LGM?
that would simplify many things for us...



>> i think that we really need a good discussion on how to better
>> finance the LGM (even if in europe the task is much easier than in north
>> america: less money to be collected, easier to collect public money).
>>
>> but the question about the target and the goals of the LGM should imo
>> be answered before we get into those questions...
> I respectfully disagree. With no money, there is no conference. The
> starting point for the discussion is the hard facts:
> * How much money does LGM cost to put on with no travel sponsorships?

i may be wrong, but my perception is that almost no money is involved in 
other tasks than refunding traveling costs. (or: not a significant 
amount of money)

also, i think that for each LGM the biggest sponsor was the institution 
providing the venue and the infrastructure (but no money was involved in 
it).


basically: it seems that the the LGM could exist with almost no cash, if 
we give up the traveling refunding.

> * How much money do we have in the bank?
> * How much money did we raise this year, and from who? (community vs
> sponsors vs projects)

i let somebody else give the numbers.

> * How much do we get in travel requests every year?

the numbers are very different in europe and in canada. i don't have the 
exact numbers. i hope somebody has them.


> That will tell you if we can continue the conference at all.

i'm sorry i could not provide any number. but i hope that what i wrote 
above helps to understand the current financial situation (and i hope 
that the fact that i don't own the numbers has not lead me to write 
insane things!)


> Then you can figure out what you want the next conference to be about.

we can do it that way. no problem.

personally, i still prefer to first check what we want to do, and then 
see who can do it, how much money it will cost and how we can raise 
it... but we can talk about money first, if you (plural) prefer.


have a nice day
a.l.e