Dear ACM SIGCOMM officials, Enclosed is the final ACM SIGCOMM 2000 financial report. It consists of the following: comments-to-final-result: Please read this one first. tmrf-ii-sigcomm2000-actual0104: TMRF with actual numbers and budget numbers for 2000 and 1999. stocon-report-with-adjustment: The Convention Burea report in Swedish, with my adjustments I hope that this is satisfactory for you. Let me know if you need additional information. I have instructed the Convention Burea to transfer the money and to notify me when it is done. Best Regards Per Gunningberg General chair, Treasurer (Who enjoyed very much to organise the event and to work with ACM) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Comments to sigcomm financials report, 2001-04-09 ================================================= Author: Per Gunningberg, General chair and treasure, ACM SIGCOMM 2000. Number of participants ====================== Conference Total, 407 Students, 135 Members, 189 Non-members, 59 Invited/organisers, 24 New ACM memberships: 43 - a total of 36765SEK New SIGCOMM memberships: 33 - a total of 5346SEK Tutorials: Participants Tutorial Monday, M1 56 Tutorial Monday, M2 75 Tutorial Tuesday, T1 78 Tutorial Tuesday, T2 62 TMRF results. ============= The preliminary net results: ACM Administrative fees: Conference, ACM HQ $10831 Tutorials $6368 Contingency $36699 Surplus $2926 TOTAL $56824 Account standing: Sweden 58690 ACM USA -2481 Notes to TMRF: ============== The TMRF has several and extensible notes attached to the actual numbers. Here I want to highlight some of them for your information: *It should be noted that the exchange rate between SEK and USD has fluctuated between 8,5 to 10,6 SEK per dollars. Unfortunely the dollars is very strong at this moment which will affect the net result paid from Sweden. The tmrf budget was done in dollars and while the costs and incomes are in SEK. For the cost side we have used the exchange factor 9SEK per USD (which was also used for the registration form). *The conference has paid the cost for the ACM SIGCOMM business meeting, about $2050.This has lowered the TOTAL surplus above. *We do not expect any additional costs from Sweden. However, there is a pending discussion about additional cost to the Convention Burea in about $3000 that may apply. *The fees for the NSF students were paid very late but at a higher exchange rate (12% higher). This fluctuation is not reflected in the actual tmrf and gives a slightly lower income than expected. *According to swedish VAT tax law we are entitled to a tax payback of about $12000. That sum is included in the results. *The new ACM and SIGCOMM membership fees have been transferred to ACM and do not have any impact on the financial result. *The conference has paid a SIGCOMM99 cost from the ACM account of $203,77. Other comments ============== The handling of printing and mailing Advance programs and proceedings, turned out to be a constant source of problems. It was handled by the US company Sheridan, engaged by ACM. The problems were both financial and production problems. I would not recommend in the future to have a publisher so far away from the control of the budget and furthermore I can not recommend Sheridan. Some sample problems with Sheridan Printing - Incompetence in handling electronic version of AP - Incorrect font setting and missing background picture. No blueprint for proof. - Delayed shipping of advance program to US recipients. - Choice of a very expensive shipping company of advance program - Inability to produce PDF-files of papers for web-publishing - AP printing cost exceeded estimated cost with 200% - Inappropriate shipping of proceedings and delay in shipping. Cost exceeded 350% of estimated cost. Some sample Sheridan costs compared to budget: TMFR ID budget actual 1202 5333 6806 1203 200 674 1205 500 1143 1206 2200 593 1207 1500 4978 1208 0 922 3103 800 2758 ----- ----- TOTAL 10533 17874 Other experiences ================= Student participation This year we had 135 students registered, about a third of the total number. The share of students has increased compared to previous years which we are happy about, but the conference lose money on all registered students. The early registration fee for students was 100USD. Right now the variable cost is above 300USD. In fact, if the contingency is considered as a variable cost (it is proportional to the total income!) the cost per participant is higher than the member early registration fee. Since we can not plan for the number of students there has to be some policy for the future in case the number of students increses substantially compared to budget and regular participants. Late registration For this year we had less on-site registrations than expected. We believe that there are very few US on-site registrations for conferences outside US, since it is more likely that US folks need to plan an overseas travel earlier compared to when it is in the US. Participants from outside Sweden are also likely to plan ahead. Printing material locally or at ACM? For this year we printed: - proceedings in the US because it is a CCR issue - CFP and AP in the US. It was also distributed from the US, but was prepared locally. - Tutorials locally, but prepared in the US. - FP locally. It was also prepared locally The next time the conference is outside US, we recommend that there should be someone in US who is responsible for and take care of the US printing process and the mailing since they are major costs. Experiences using an outside conference bureau Advantages: - Professional handling of VAT, which was worth a lot since the handling turned out to be very complicated - Handling of all contacts with hotels and restaurants and tour organisers - Handling of payments to all contractors - Experiences on how to organise conferences and to "move" people to different events Consequences - They required us to take all decisions anyhow. I expected them to take small obvious decisions but they did not. - There is still a need to check all invoices they pay - Their registration system is "canned" and we need to follow it. - Considerable cost For next time I would still recommend a conference bureau, but also to have a secretary at the work place who is competent to can take small decisions, who can handle many direct contacts with contractors and who could check invoices. TMRF budget The budget was made in dollars while all costs and income was in Swedish currency (krona, SEK). This set-up gives an uncertainity in both the budget process and the cost reporting due to exchange rate fluctuations. I suggest that the budget is made in the currency of organising country and instead build in an exchange rate parameter in the TMRF for convenience. (However, there will always be costs and incomes in US dollars that must be handled.) Contingency The current budget requires a contingency of 15% of the total cost when it is outside US. When it is organised in the USA it is less, appearently 10%. It is argued that there is a higher risk for conferences outside US than inside. I think that the higher contingency unfortunely has a negative effect on stimulating organisers outside USA since: - the organisers need to bring in more money when outside USA. The obvious alternatives for the organisers are to increase the registration fee or to reduce the services. Raising the fee will further discourage US participations since they will need to spend more money on both overseas travel and on the registration fee. Reducing the services will send the message to the participants that the conference is organised poorer outside US. It could then be argued that the conference should stay in the US which is not in the long term interest for community. I would argue that the contingency should be lower outside US than in the US or that ACM should cover some of the additional costs, such as shipping of proceedings, exchange rate insurances and additional planning resources. Uppsala, April 2001 Per Gunningberg