Meeting Summary

The Future Of Drupalcon

Cary Gordon opened the floor for questions about IDG, O'Reilly or the selection of GroundSwell. There were no questions raised. Cary then moved on to more general questions about the proposed motion.

The floor was opened for questions.

Kieran Lal raised two concerns: first, about the amount of work and pressure that this would place on the Events Director, and second that the amount of money flowing through this person would be over a million dollars, so oversight and transparency to the DA was absolutely critical.

Cary responded that the DA having full control over DrupalCons would actually mean less work for him than he has had to do for Paris, and if GroundSwell was not in fact doing their jobs, they would be replaced ASAP. Cary agreed that things like signing contracts like GroundSwell and conference venues can and shold require Board authorization. Gerhard Killesreiter echoed Kieran's concerns about oversight, and asked to amend the motion to stipulate a reporting duty, e.g. that the Drupal Association is updated once per month until 2 months before the conference, then every two weeks. Cary agreed completely with this suggestion and said he would comply. Kieran re-iterated the importance of transparency in reporting.

Cary agreed, and said he cannot overstate his appreciation for appreciation for Riche's reporting work. Staffing is an important component of what we need to talk about going forward, and hopes we can explore that in Paris.

Drupalcon San Francisco

The floor was then opened for discussion of the Drupalcon San Francisco proposal, and discussion was moved into #drupal-DCSF, where the San Francisco organizing team was present.

The Drupalcon SF proposal is available at http://drupalconsf2010.org/sites/all/files/drupalconsf_2010_final.pdf. (also attached below)

Dries Buytaert asked what the break-even point is of the event, since 2500 attendees is a big jump forward from the 1400 we drew at Drupalcon DC.

Cary noted we would be on the hook for about $500K. Matt Cheney of the SF team responded that the break even point is going to be determined by several factors (including sponsorships, ticket sales, and attendance). Assuming the details in the proposal (sponsorships at $360k, ticket price at $150) and use 100% of the budget, we would need ~1200 people to attend to "break even".

As a follow-up, Dries asked if the team has any concerns or reservations about these targets. Matt responded that given the nature of the SF Bay Area, attandenace of far greater than 1200 attendees is projected, and he has confidence in the estimates that Kieran and the rest of the finance team came up with. Dries then called the board to a vote:

Vote: Do we accept the motions (as a whole) proposed by Cary as pasted above? (PASSED: 8 yes, 0 no, 0 abstain)

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