[council] RE: preliminary budget

["Ben Edelman" <edelman@law.harvard.edu>]

Ken wrote:

> a.. room expenses 4 meetings @ 1000/room x 4  (this is dependent on how
good of
>      a negotiator Andrew & Louis are so it could & should be eve less
here) US $   4000
> b.  webcast 4 meetings at 4 hours = 16 hours @ 120/hr (fudge factor = 20%)
= 1920
> c. 6  teleconferences averave 2 hours with 12-15 participants
>      (all participants pay for the cost of the call to the conference
center
>       except the secretariat)      $675 X 6  + $50/call for secretariat
4700


My most recent comments re the costs of webcasting physical meetings and
providing comprehensive remote participation are archived at
<http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/council/Arc01/msg00377.html>.  As that
message indicates, the DNSO's share of webcasting costs hovers in the area
of $8,000 to $10,000 per meeting -- for the costs are in fact far greater
than what's listed above.

$1000 for room rental is about right, I believe... but realize that there
are additional costs not contemplated above, for example PA equipment
rental, generally on the order of several hundred dollars per day.

Beyond the costs of room rental, webcasting on location with remote
participation has previously proven to be considerably more expensive than
the $120/hour you cite in (b) above: In the past, several Berkman Center
staff have traveled to meeting locations at significant expense; in addition
to travel costs, we incur costs for equipment and insurance as well as for
the imputed costs of the time of Berkman Center staff.  I believe we've
already made every reasonable effort to contain costs to the extent
possible, and I don't anticipate that the total cost of webcasting will
decline significantly from its current level of about $30,000 per meeting,
including on-site rental of projectors, audio equipment, high-speed Internet
access, etc., without substantial loss of functionality to users of the
remote participation system.  Perhaps it's the intention of the council to
dramatically cut the remote participation it makes available to those unable
to attend physical meetings -- but that wasn't my recollection from prior
discussion of the subject.

In short, I believe the budgets of lines a and b together are considerably
smaller than will prove necessary to maintain current levels of
accessibility via remote participation.  The budget contemplates about
$6,000 per year for the expenses of four meetings, whereas I believe the
costs (of the *three* meetings per year I understand to be the plan at the
moment) are likely to be between $24,000 and $30,000.



Re the costs of teleconference (c), if you want to continue to continue to
webcast teleconferences, you need to plan to pay for same -- details at
<http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/council/Arc03/msg00250.html>.  Perhaps
that's already anticipated in the $675 figure -- just want to be sure.


Finally, I should note that the $2400 balance described in
<http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/council/Arc03/msg00250.html> -- owed by the
DNSO directly to the Berkman Center (not to ICANN!) -- remains overdue,
portions of it nearly six months so.  As constituencies continue to send
their contributions to the start-up DNSO funding, I hope I'm correct in
expecting that this bill will be paid.



(Sorry to be so late following up -- I'm not on the council@dnso.org list,
instead reading it only via the web, so I can't reply until the web list
archive at <http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/council/Arc03/maillist.html> is
updated, which only happens every few days.)


Ben Edelman
Berkman Center for Internet and Society
Harvard Law School