[Eg-oversight-board] Budget revision for Evergreen 2014 International Conference

[Kathy Lussier]

Hi all,

For today's conference update, I will be presenting a revision to the 
budget for the 2014 Evergreen International Conference.

Registrations for the conference have been lower than expected. As a 
result, we are now anticipating that the overall reduction in income 
will exceed the 10% threshold that requires Board vote on a revised budget.

For your reference, I have attached the previously approved budget as of 
January. The current budget revision is available in a Google doc at 
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ar4gDMUDwDXqdFoxZFJGbGxMYXR0bUdNYmZmc3A1M3c&usp=sharing.

I'm still hammering out the details for some potential cost reductions, 
but I've assumed the worst case scenario, given our current income, 
costs, and contractual obligations, when pulling together this budget. 
Despite a concerted effort to cut costs where we can, this worst case 
scenario is showing a loss of $1,800.

Some bullet points on how I approached this budget:

* The income is only showing known registrations, sponsorships, and 
exhibitors. There are no projections here.

* When looking at expenses to cut, there were certain areas where we 
didn't have much leeway due to contractual obligations. Specifically, 
our contractual food & beverage minimum (covered by the breakfasts, 
breaks, and reception) was based on a turnout of 200-225 people 
registered for the entire four days. It therefore was much higher than 
we would have set if we had anticipated the current level of registrations.

* The area where we had the most flexibility for reducing costs was in 
a/v. Back when we were first negotiating with the conference venue, we 
had negotiated a price of $11,000 for 7 Mbps of bandwidth for the 
wireless connection. However, given the current budget, I am 
recommending that we go back to the 3 Mbps of bandwidth typically 
offered at the hotel, bringing the cost down to $9,000.

* In an unrelated issue, we discovered fairly late in the process that 
the team planning to do our conference recording services would have to 
back out. This left us in a tough spot as it was a group that offered 
conference recording at a fairly affordable rate. We considered doing 
our own recording using the same software that the original team was 
planning to use. However, we discovered that it would require that we 
purchase fairly pricey equipment. The hotel recording service was very 
expensive and some area a/v service providers were either unavailable or 
only willing to record if it were bundled with an a/v package that was 
more expensive than the one provided by the hotel. In the end, we have 
also backed this expense out of the budget.

This latter decision was difficult for many reasons, one of which was 
the fact that we had sponsors for a/v and recording. Amy is contacting 
those sponsors about shifting their sponsorships to a more generic a/v, 
wireless sponsorship.

* Eventbrite fees have been removed from the budget as the SFC has 
worked out an agreement with them to waive the fees.

* There are still two places where I see potential to shave costs, but I 
did not include them because I don't have confirmation yet. First, I do 
believe that we met our room attrition, but the last numbers I saw 
showed us short by two room nights, so I included that cost just in case 
I'm wrong. Also, we have been looking at ways to reduce our general a/v 
costs. Yamil Suarez had already helped by offering a nice projector for 
one of the conference spaces. I'm looking at a way to reconfigure our 
space to eliminate the need for a projector and screen.  If those two 
items work out the way I expect them too, we should be at the breakeven 
point, but I'm not making any promises until I receive final confirmation.

Feel free to throw any questions my way during today's EOB meeting.

Kathy

-- 
Kathy Lussier
Project Coordinator
Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative
(508) 343-0128
klussier at masslnc.org
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kmlussier

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