RE: [SwarmFest2004] swarmfest04 -- Budget estimates --- **Please respond**

[Burkhart Roger M]

No other response back yet from Rick's message despite his
call for urgency...

I never heard back from my own question as to whether or not
SDG had ever offered to cover the risk of putting on a SwarmFest
for anyone else, but since I don't remember ever being asked to
vote on it I assume not, which means that the host presumably
assumed any risk.  But the way budgets have moved in nearly
every state-supported university I hear about the last couple
years makes it perfectly understandable that UMich budgets
not be able to take on the risk.  Personally, I think offering
SDG funds to cover any risk based on numbers of attendees,
while keeping SwarmFest registration fees and categories where
they've been, is an appropriate use of SDG funds, and I would
vote in favor. Your suggested amount of up to $3000 to cover
fixed costs, which would need to be covered only if attendee
numbers failed to materialize, fits well within SDG capacity
especially since we haven't been spending money on anything else.

Does anyone else have any opinions before we should take this
over to the SDG directors list to ask for a vote?  (This list
alone has a majority of the board so we might as well have
a consensus here first.)  Unfortunately, I'm going to be out
of email contact for close to a week after today, so if Rick
or anyone wants to go ahead and issue a call for vote so Rick
can get out his CFP, please feel free to go ahead and count
me as a supporter even if my vote comes toward the end of
the open voting period.  If Rick has a clear enough consensus
prior to the final formalities of the vote perhaps that can
also be enough to go ahead with the call.  Perhaps we could
make this a request of the organizing committee that just
needs to be confirmed by the board.

With the May date I think that this CFP will still make it out
further ahead of time than any other that I recall.  We should
give some thought about how to promote the event this year,
and perhaps the wording to put in the CFP.  I think it would
be good to emphasize our interest in attracting all cross
sections of the ABM community on either applications or tools.
Separate from the CFP we may also want to contact other toolkit
developers to see if they would be interested in gathering for
some additional discussions on toolkit directions, perhaps on
Sunday when the tutorial is going on, similar to what Michael
North has organized at the Agent 200x conferences in Chicago
in the fall.  This year's SwarmFest could be well-timed to get
a read on any new toolkit development directions, especially
given the shift in RePast support and new toolkits like Mason
(or any others I haven't heard about yet) popping up.

On the fine detail of the budget, once we feel we're past any
risk threshhold, one more budget category we've occasionally
spent in the past is for live entertainment (of various
eclectic kinds) at the opening reception or at dinner.  I don't
know what the logistics for lunch may be, but paying the $720
for lunch one day but not the other may not be necessary (unless
this was just for tutorial attendees).

--Roger

-----Original Message-----
From: Rick Riolo [mailto:address@hidden
Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2003 8:38 AM
To: Burkhart Roger M
Cc: swarmfest 2004 organizing committee
Subject: RE: [SwarmFest2004] swarmfest04 -- Budget estimates ---
**Please respond**



Hi All,

Roger, thanks for your comments.

I want to get directly to finances, since that is key
before i go ahead and invite a keynote and post a CFP.

Roger asked about expectations, eg based on last year.
In short, registration fees did cover the basic costs,
and in fact i guess there was a little profit.

One message i received (from greg or jim, i forget who):

Attendance:  83
  Swarm Conference fee collected:  $8,834.00
  Expenses:   $6,325.00
  Balance deposited to WF savings: $1925.00 + $584
  Additional Contribution: $6637 (keynote speaker, more?)
  Tutorial: Earned $920.
We received a spreadsheet with registration info and it showed:
The breakdown is 54 paid, 28 free:
     Amt   #
   $  25   2
      50   6
      75   2
     100  13
     125   6
     150   2
     175   3
     200   5
     225   8
     250   1
     300   5
     325   1
       0  28  -- mostly ND students
  $ 8250  82
I'm not sure why the amount sent in a msg (see above) is more.
I also don't know how many actually attended the dinner (which
would affect the cost a lot), e.g., did the free attendees (students)
from ND get to go to the dinner?

Just to remind you, these fees are from this pricing structure:
$  0  for SDG group members !!
$ 50  off for indivdiual members (of any type):
$300  -- corporate and government
$200  -- academic
$100  -- student
$ 50  -- tutorial (could be 2 people)
Add $25 for registration after XXX.

Anyway, Here are estimated expenses for this year @um:

So for 60 people:
$ 1200  reception
$ 1600  breaks (2 days)
$ 1500  dinner (1 day)
$  720  lunch (1 day)
$  640  rooms (sun evening, mon, tues) -- maybe $0
------
$ 5660
$ 1800  keynote   (could be less, depend on flight costs)
------
$ 7460
$  250  tutorial refreshments
------
  7710

If we get 80 (1/3) more people, add about $1500.

Our fixed costs are keynote and rooms, approx $2400.
The rest are (somewhat) adjustable based on attendance,
since they are all food related.

So...

I don't know how to estimate the risk to SDG if it has
to cover expenses, perhaps $2000-3000 i suppose is a reasonable
max estimate.  

If we get the number/distribution of paying attendees as we
got last year, we earn about $8200.
Our costs are $7700-9200, depending on total attendence
and free attendence (and whether they get dinners and lunch).

***Please*** 
let me know your reactions to this (or a confirmation of "no reaction"!).
I want to get the CFP *really soon*, but I can't do that
until I know that SDG will cover the deficit, if there is one.
So I'd like your reactions and then I'd like take this
to the SDG board (or i guess roger could, if he would...)
and get a vote on the potential deficit issue.

Thanks,

- r


-- 
Rick Riolo                           address@hidden
Center for the Study of Complex Systems (CSCS)
4477 Randall Lab                
University of Michigan         Ann Arbor MI 48109-1120
Phone: 734 763 3323                  Fax: 734 763 9267
http://cscs.umich.edu/~rlr

On Mon, 24 Nov 2003, Burkhart Roger M wrote:

> Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 17:13:53 -0600
> From: Burkhart Roger M <address@hidden>
> To: address@hidden
> Subject: RE: [SwarmFest2004] swarmfest04 -- Budget estimates and related
>     issues
> 
> In response to Rick's message:

...snip...
> 
> Seems reasonable to me.
> 
> > *** Note Well ***
> > CSCS will not be able to put in large amounts of $ as Notre Dame did last
> > year.   We can provide organizational work, materials, etc.
> 
> Perhaps Greg can help fill in, but leaving aside the keynote
> that was covered by a broader departmental account, did the event
> cover its own direct expenses?
> 
> > So...we (CSCS) have to have some commitment from SDG that
> > if revenue is substantially below income, that SDG will use
> > its funds to make the difference.
> > (CSCS could cover a few hundred dollars, if it was that's all it was,
> > but UM has taken 2 $ reduction-in-State-support in this fiscal year in
> > support (6%, now 3% more!) and that has been passed on to CSCS, so things
> > are very very tight here, alas.)
> 
> Given that the biggest risk is likely to be attendance, the
> ability to scale the costs based on final registrations may
> help somewhat.  Since putting on SDG is one of the few things
> the formal organization does anymore it seems appropriate to me
> to consider SDG funds.  Can anyone indicate whether we provided
> any option to fall back on this for the most recent two SwarmFests
> at Washington and Notre Dame?  
> 
> > Should I send a message to the SDG to ask for a vote on that?
> 
> We should probably pin down the budget amounts a bit more here
> first.  How close do you think we could come in arriving at a
> maximum amount to be covered if registrations were to fall short?
> 
> --Roger
> 
> 
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