[Lcabid] Events Report for meeting 2009-07-11

[Russell Stuart]

A few more quotes have come in:

Penguin Dinner:

  - Brisbane Convention Centre has now supplied figures for beverage
    and AV.  Total is around $117 pp.

  - The Greek Club has come in at around $103 pp, however that does
    not include wine.

  Summary - With wine they both look to be at around the $120 pp mark,
            and this is what I will use as my final figure for
            budgeting.  This is a *considerable* increase on last year.


Professional Delegates Networking Session:

  - Enctice has supplied figures for catering.  I add them up to be
    $50 pp, but there is lots of room for mistakes in the adding up.

  - Culinart has come in at $60 pp for catering.

  Summary - Allowing for the $4 pp the Museum charges, $60 pp seems
            like a reasonable final figure.


Speakers Dinner:

  No changes here as all quotes were in last time.

  Summary - The average of the two quotes was $120 pp.  This is 
            the figure I suggest we use for budgeting purposes.


-- End of Report --

Regarding the budget spreadsheet, a couple of observations:

a.  It needs an income section.

b.  It needs an easy way to break the expenses into fixed costs and
    costs that vary per person.


Regarding Shaun's idea of using a theme for the Conference.  In my
experience themes are rather like eye candy - they sound nice but have
little impact on the conference itself.  The conference organisers may
choose to highlight a few aspects of the conference over others, but for
the most part the speakers talk about what interests them - not about
the theme.  You might rightly gather as far as the conference goes, I
can't see it making much difference.

However, the bid is all about eye candy, and if we tie the bid together
using a central theme it sounds like a good idea to me.  The theme would
be the central idea that sticks in your mind when you read Brisbane's
bid - something that separates our bid from the others.

Some of the previous bids had themes of sorts, although they didn't call
them that.  The Linux Chic thing was a theme - a concerted effort was
made to get more females involved.  The idea of getting the community
involved with an open day was another theme.  Since we seem to be
heading down the path anyway, my suggestion for a theme would be to get
the younger generation involved - the schools.  Give it a cute name -
"Open Source for Open Minds" or something.