[AH] A06 budget

[Nicholas Shectman <phi@big.mahonkin.com>]

It's budget time!  This mail is going to a list that's much smaller than 
the staff list -- it currently contains between 20 and 30 people.  If 
you're getting this, that means I would like you to have direct input into 
our budget, and to have visibility into how it is put together.  I'd like 
to have a budget complete and ready to publish by the end of this 
month.  That means any big changes that will affect the budget have to be 
worked out now.

The biggest change is that last year, the Corporation voted to lower our 
attendance rates.  All prereg rates are lower by $5.  The full weekend at- 
door rate is down $10 to $40.  The student at-door rate is down $15 to $25, 
and that rate is now available as a prereg rate to students.  One-day rates 
are unchanged, meaning that a Saturday membership is only  $5 less than a 
full weekend membership.  Obviously, all of this will add a lot of 
uncertainty to our income.

Another change from the Corporation is that our art show rates are slightly 
higher and more predictable:  $28 per panel or table, and no 
commission.  This is not a final answer as we may choose to vary the rates 
depending on how much space is reserved.  But any such proposal would be 
revenue-neutral compared to the $28 rate, so we can go ahead and budget 
against that.

Finally, last year's convention enjoyed a financial boost from some 
concessions the Corporation negotiated from the hotel.  A few of those 
concessions will also be present for A06, but most of them will not.

Then there are the things I'd like to do differently for this 
convention.  I have already committed us to a big expense by asking John 
Howe to be the Artist GoH.  Our past experience with European AGoHs 
suggests that this will cost at least five percent and perhaps close to ten 
percent of our budget.

I would like, as one of my driving principles, to make Arisia a convention 
of general excellence.  That means fixing things we don't allocate enough 
resources to.  A prime example of this is our Con Suite.  We have not been 
giving this enough resources in terms of staff, space or budget.  If there 
are other things that we should be paying more attention to, now is the 
time to point this out.

I would also like to work out our guest room utilization in some detail, so 
that unused rooms can be budgeted as income for the convention.  And to the 
extent that I can, I would like to move things out of guest rooms, to 
maximize that income.  Since a lot of those things will get moved into 
space on the fourth floor, I think we now need to figure out in some detail 
how the function space in the hotel will be used as well.  I have some 
preliminary thoughts on this, but I'd like to hear any and all ideas about 
how we might use the space in the hotel -- imagine that we're moving into 
it for the first time, and start by imagining the best places for each 
activity to go.  Don't be constrained by the fact that something else was 
there in '05; it may be moving too.

I would also like to reexamine the things that we do with an eye towards 
eliminating those that take up more money, space, or volunteer resources 
than is justified by their benefit to the convention.  There are a few 
things I've already decided to kill, based on input from last year's 
concom:  the Corporate Sales table, the Sunday Sundae, and the Convention 
Office.  I also think we should distill down the Internet Room to two 
terminals and a wireless hub and put it into the Gopher Hole as a way to 
attract volunteers.  Put another way, just because we do something every 
year, or we do it in a particular way every year, is not enough to justify 
doing it this year, and now is the time to reevaluate what we do.  No idea 
is too crazy to mention.  Ideas which save staff but no money are also 
worth mentioning now, because in many cases having more staff available 
gives us more flexibility to do things for less money elsewhere.

I hope by budgeting conservatively in some areas to be able to budget 
liberally in other areas.  So while I would love to hear ways that we can 
economize, I think this discussion should give plenty of time to ways that 
we can spend money to make the convention better, particularly if it fixes 
a deficiency.

					-/phi