@aniqakhokhar is it okay to add ticket costs to this? Advaith has already bought a ticket so doesn't need one but me and Rishi would require one if its possible.

In T18127#319708, @aakarshmj wrote:

@aniqakhokhar is it okay to add ticket costs to this? Advaith has already bought a ticket so doesn't need one but me and Rishi would require one if its possible.

Yes you can

In T18127#319774, @aniqakhokhar wrote:

In T18127#319708, @aakarshmj wrote:

@aniqakhokhar is it okay to add ticket costs to this? Advaith has already bought a ticket so doesn't need one but me and Rishi would require one if its possible.

Yes you can

Okay, thank you!

In T18127#319776, @aakarshmj wrote:

In T18127#319774, @aniqakhokhar wrote:

In T18127#319708, @aakarshmj wrote:

@aniqakhokhar is it okay to add ticket costs to this? Advaith has already bought a ticket so doesn't need one but me and Rishi would require one if its possible.

Yes you can

Okay, thank you!

Hi, so I asked the organizers about tickets with booth and he told me there would be 2 tickets free per booth so ig we wouldn't require seperate tickets. They will update the forum to reflect this.

@brute4s99 will be handling stickers and will update the costs

Booth confirmation received 🎉

Good start, thanks for helping organise this @aakarshmj !

My only observation is that you must be bit clearer on what your goal's are.

A goal, in this context, is, when all is done and the event is finished, what you want to come away with. Example of goals:

• Raise €1000 in donations
• Acquire at least 1 new company sponsor for KDE
• Get 10 people to install Plasma on their computers
• Get 10 people to open a KDE identity account and fix one bug each
• Get 10 people to sign up for SoK
• Get the name and contact info of a high-ranking public official so we can contact them about using KDE products within their organisation
• etc.

Here is a document we created to help people write and submit a valid proposal for funded event attendance:

This year The Board has assigned Promo a fixed amount of money for attending events. While not low, we must be careful and selective on what events we will be spending this money on.

The overall annual budget for 2024 is as follows

• For FLOSS related events (FOSDEM, FOSSAsia, Linux Tags, etc.): €3000
• For non-FLOSS related events (STN, events for educators, artists, etc.): €5000

We will be elaborating a draft list of the most prominent events in 2024 (in which everybody is invited to participate) and whittle it down to what we think reasonably can be funded with the given budget.

This is not a bad thing. It will give us focus and help us choose more carefully events we want to attend, and help define why we are going and what we want to achieve.

We have written down some guidelines on what we would looking for to fund an event attendance through Promo.

Take a look and see what you think:

Before the Event

We would like to see

• a list of valid promotional goals
  • Valid goals could include:
    • Collect details of principals and educational board members who would seem open to testing KDE software in their schools
    • Collect details of organizations/corporations that are willing to use KDE's software or collaborate with us in some way
    • Convince a collective to use KDE software, be it Plasma or specific apps
    • Broker collaboration deals with other communities to work on joint projects
    • Get people to install Plasma or a specific KDE app
    • Recruit new developers/development teams for KDE
  • Invalid goals[1] could include:
    • Run workshops
    • Raise funds
    • Raise awareness
    • Hand out Stickers and merch
    • Deliver a talk
• a list of materials that will help achieve those goals, including devices for show and demos (large screens, tactile screens, loudspeakers, microphones, mobile devices, "naked" hardware, etc.), devices to count and register the number of visitors to the booth, printed cards (if it is that kind of event), pen and paper (or their digital equivalents) to write down contact details, stickers, merch, etc.
• a list of activities that will help achieve the goals, such as demos, talks, workshops, etc.

[1] They are not goals, they are activities you carry out to achieve your goals.

During the Event

We would like you to

• Carry out the demos
• Actively engage with the audience (i.e. do not only let the audience go to you but actively pull them in)
• Document everything with photos and videos at all stages of the event if some can be later reused in promotional materials, so much the better. Make sure you ask for permission from subjects to publish their likeness. Get people talking on camera about their views, either candidly or in response to your questions.
• Take note of the number of visitors, most common questions and comments, most common activities visitors engaged in, etc.

After the Event

You will have to

• Write an internal post-mortem containing
  • A list of goals achieved and the next steps to be followed relative to each goal (e.g. "have a call with the XYZ organization/company", "email Ms. H G information", "Start sponsorship admin for the A company", "download info of G to Mr. K, head of the L school", etc.). The more specific the better.
  • a detailed description of the event
  • a description of the profile of the attendees
  • a description of the booth or talk and materials you took with you
  • a description of all the information you collected (except for sensitive personal details, like contacts of leads)
  • a description of what and how attendees interacted with you and your material, pointing out the most and least popular materials, merch, etc.
  • a "lessons learned" section, detailing what worked, what failed, and what you would advise we do next time

All of the above can be bullet points

You will also need to

• Write a blog post we can later include in the Annual report
• Transfer leads and other useful promotional information to the promo team with instructions for the next steps
• Transfer recorded material (photos and videos) to the promo team

Events that can't be funded

All events that do not have a clear promotional value will be have to be denied, as budget is limited this year.

Important caveat

This does not mean you cannot attend an event and get funded! Many events are still worth going to even if they do not have promotional value, but then they you must not expect funding to come from Promo's overall annual budget.

Your way forward in a case like this would be to negotiate travelling, accommodation and other expenses with some other team, maybe with the Board itself. Failing that, you may have to cover the expenses yourself.

You can still rely on Promo to provide free stuff to take with you if available, like stickers, or banners, and we will happily advise you on how to proceed.

And, for a good measure, here is the template we use to write a event tasks and we use it to make sure we don't forget anything

Organise Attendance to [Name of Event]

Description

• What? Where? When?

Important Dates

• Deadlines for soliciting booths, submitting CfPs. etc.

Goals

• What do you want to achieve for KDE?

Actions

• What are you going to do at the event? Deliver a talk? Set up a booth?

TODOs

Talks

• List of stuff you need to prepare to deliver a successful talk
• ...

Booth

• List of stuff you need to put together to run a successful booth
• ...

Budget

Costs

Please read this:

Money Raised

Post-mortem and TODO list

• What did you do?
• How did it go?
• What did you learn
• How are you going to use this information to improve KDE?

You need more and more concrete goals. We cannot justify paying for 4 people to attend an event just to vaguely recruit contributors and testers.

In T18127#320534, @paulb wrote:

You need more and more concrete goals. We cannot justify paying for 4 people to attend an event just to vaguely recruit contributors and testers.

Yes we are looking into updating our proposal. You shared quite valuable points, we will update our proposal to reflect that. Please allow us time to update the proposal

@paulb Thank you for the input, I think we would need to sit for a meeting over this weekend and align on some goals. Would you be available? Otherwise me and @aakarsh can align

Hi @paulb I have updated the Goals of the conference, Let me know your thoughts regarding this. Also a bit of clarification travel sponsorship for only one volunteer has been asked.

In T18127#320591, @aakarshmj wrote:

Hi @paulb I have updated the Goals of the conference, Let me know your thoughts regarding this. Also a bit of clarification travel sponsorship for only one volunteer has been asked.

Excellent work. Those are really good goals we can get behind. Green light from me.

Great! So what does my next steps look like? Do I need to ping nate on the reimbursement request?

No. Work with @aniqakhokhar. She'll guide you through the process

I will message you @aakarshmj on Telegram

Okay, thank you @paulb @aniqakhokhar