Dear all,
the event request forms provided by IFIP are awful. This feeling is shared by everyone. Nobody is able to give half way correct information about the conference budget. This is a lot of unneccessary burden for TC and WG chairs.
I promised to simplify that scheme and the first result is found in the attachments.
There is: - an empty sheet (don't care about the #DIV!0 in the before last line; it will disappear when you fill the form) - and a virtual example.
You may and should play around with the forms and tell me whether you find them easy enough to use. WG chairpersons should give it to prospective conference organisors.
Some comments are in order: 1. The document has been kept as simple as possible (fool-proof, hopefully). You have to fill in only the figures in frames (light blue colours). The other figures (in light yellow) will then automatically be calculated. 2. A very crude approximation of registration fee is used: Only for full paying participants, no early bird registration, no special rate for members of diverse societies, no student fee etc. It would be impossible to have those concrete figures well before the event. Thus if you estimate for example that the total registration fee by students might be identical to, say, 10 full paying participants then you should increase the number of expected full paying participants accordingly. Similar for the variable expenses per participant. 3. "Contingencies" are meant to be a reserve just to be on the safe side. They are - according to IFIP - 10 percent of the variable cost per participant and could, of course, be already taken into account there. Nevertheless, since these costs are automatically calculated we can leave it in the document. 4. "Break even number of participants" should be clear but since I have been asked several times about this: This is the minimum number of full paying participants which will be needed if the conference should not make a deficit (and if all other parameters are valid). You will see that it is wonderfully easy to play around and to determine registration fees, fixed expenses,.. which are meaningful and which may end up with a reasonable surplus. It might be that the break even number will turn out to be negative! In that case you will have a serious problem with your budget: either the registration fee is too low or .... 5. I didn't nclude information about loan and grants (since IFIP says that in such a case "a more detailed budget information is needed). If you want I can add a few lines for that purpose (and also for different categories of registration but my first purpose was to keep the document as simple as possible). 6. Conferences (and the sponsorship fee to IFIP) are calculated in full days; thus if the conference lasts 2,5 days then the fee to IFIP will be calculated on a 3-day basis.
Now: Please check the new forms and give me your comments within the next two weeks (improvements, modifications, what is missing, what should be deleted,...). I would then formally approve the new sheets in Bangkok and tell IFIP secretariat that we will not any more use the old bullshit versions.
Best regards (and have fun with the new sheet) Otto