Wicked Good Ruby budget

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Sean and I were just sent the "near final" estimate of the conference. Basically it breaks down to two numbers:

Conference cost to be paid before the conference: $86,000. We have already paid $20,000 of this.

Potential unsold hotel rooms cost: $25,000. This is an additional cost above the conference cost. It could be less by the date of the conference as the hotel has agreed to open our block to the general public for purchase.

T-shirts, stickers, badges, other costs: I estimate those additional costs at least $7k. Let's round it up to be safe and say we're looking at $10k for all of that.

Confreaks is around $10k (I think, I can't find the invoice)

As of today the total conference cost: $131,000.


Revenue:
Ticket sales: $78,000
Sponsorship: $31,000
Revenue: $109,000

This puts us at a $22k loss right now.

Right away I can shave $5k off of this. The venue keeps adding the paid wifi which is $5k. He has been told many times to take it off, and he keeps adding it on. It's coming off tomorrow one way or the other. We will use the public wifi at the venue. We went $6k above the food budget. If we bring the food budget down to the minimum of $45,000 after the taxes and services charges this brings the charges for food down to $58,950 (from $67,800) which shaves nearly $9k off of the estimate. (we are being charged 7% tax instead of the MA 6.25% tax which I don't understand)

The estimate includes $8.3k for AV which I still think is pricey but in the grand scheme of things not the worst part of what we have. Perhaps we can knock it down a bit if we take a look at exactly what they're doing.

So assuming we can bring down the food price that means we can bring everything down by $14k. Which still means a $12k loss. So the profit margin for the conference is highly dependent on the hotel rooms selling, selling the remaining tickets, and additional sponsors.

Best case scenario:

* additional 15 tickets sold ($5k)
* $5k+ in additional sponsorship
* half of the hotel rooms are sold (-$12.5k)

This scenario would give us a ~ $10k+ profit. I think we should try to aim for this. It would put us a little under 10% profit.

Action items:

* drum up a few more smallish sponsors ($1k, $2k, $4k)
* push the remaining ticket sales (bonus for the workshop sales)
* Shave $6k off of the food order
* Cut the paid wifi
* Try to find anything we can squeeze out of the AV.

Any miscalculations are due to fat fingers and slow brain.