Re: [council] RE: preliminary budget

["Ken Stubbs" <kstubbs@dninet.net>]

happy new year ben

the basis is used for budget preparation was an e-mail i received from you
on 12/16 to wit:

"The Berkman Center's rate, as documented in my 6/16 email to
council@dnso.org, is $100/hour for webcasts within our business day,
$200/hour for webcasts during non-business hours for which our staff are
ordinarily awake, and $500/hour during our usual sleeping times.  That rate
is all-inclusive -- including web site updates and long-term hosting.  Our
goal in setting these rates is to recover our costs -- long-distance
telephone costs, staff time, etc. -- and I believe those figures do indeed
reflect the expenses the Center incurs in running these webcasts.

At the moment, my records show the DNSO Names Council having had one
four-hour teleconference outside the business day (6/25) and eight two-hour
teleconferences within the business day (7/12, 7/26, 9/15, 9/22, 9/30, 10/5,
10/27, and 12/15).  Those sum to $800 and $1600 respectively, so I show the
DNSO's total outstanding obligations to the Berkman Center to be $2400 as of
today."

i do the best i can with the information i have at hand. ( just after the
last council meeting elizabeth promised to get me some additional
information prior to 12/31 and i still have not yet received it)

best wishes

ken




----- Original Message -----
From: Ben Edelman <edelman@law.harvard.edu>
To: <council@dnso.org>
Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2000 1:20 AM
Subject: [council] RE: preliminary budget


> 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
>
>