Organizace konference PPI v Praze

[Jana.Syrovatkova]

No, v jedné čtvrtině států získat nad 3% při volbách do Evropského parlamentu - to je výzva

[Vaclav.Malek]

Fotokronika zde, šiřte asi v této formě
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pirati/set ... 97/detail/

[Ivan.Sirko]

Ahoj,

pred nejakym casem jsem byl pozadat predsednictvem PPI, abych dodal plnou financni zpravu z organizace konference, procez jsem vytvoril tuto stranku: https://www.pirati.cz/zo/5_2012

Po nejake dobe jsem dostal na podanou zpravu nasledujici odpoved od pokladnika PPI, Eda Geraghtyho:

Dear Pirate Party of Czech Republic, Dear Tom,

I have been examining PP-CZ's 2012 GA financial report and I have the following observations, which I shall number for your ease of reference:
1) PP-CZ's offer and budget
i) Just to remind ourselves, the original offer as provided by PP-CZ(1) was 20 000 CZK for the main room + an optional 7 000 CZK per day for the conference room. There were also provisions totalling 1 000 CZK for "Decorations, Printing, etc." and 4 000 CZK as "Reserve for unexpected expenditures".
ii) This totals a budget of 25 000 CZK to 39 000 CZK (depending on additional conference room use).
2) Having studied the invoices provided, I note that whilst the conference room was booked for both days, Hub only charged 5 000 CZK for the Sunday(2).
3) This brings the total expected expenditure to 37 000 CZK - this gives a remainder of 21 746 CZK spent which was totally unaccounted for in your original budget.
4) "Decorations, Printing, etc."
i) Having studied the expenditures in the Financial Report(3), "Copy center" - 1 728 CZK -, "Name-tag covers" - 1 276 CZK - and "Markers, Glue, Scissors" - 798 CZK - should fall under "Decorations, Printing, etc."
ii) This comes to a total of 3 802 CZK, almost 4x what was budgeted for.
iii) I also note that as far as I have been made aware, the expenditure at "Copy center" should not have occurred as all printing was to be done for free at a library.
iv) Name tag covers: how many of the 200 purchased(4) were returned?
v) Markers, Scissors and Glue should have been assets already at PP-CZ's disposal, given your previous conference experiences(1) and the nature of the venue.
5) All of Tom's personal costs(5)(6)(7)(8) and Bank fees(9)(10) should be shouldered by PP-CZ, not PPI.
6) "Reserve for unexpected expenditures"
i) Cory Doctorow's Taxi(11) - as mentioned, this can be paid directly out of PPI funds held by PP-CZ once the PPI Treasurer gives his approval.
ii) Refreshments for Journalists(12) is OK
iii) Interpreting Devices(13) should have been accounted for in the original budget.
iv) The above would fall under the "Reserve" of 4 000 CZK
7) T-shirts and buttons(14)
i) According to your email dated 2012-08-27 "I need to find the organizing team photo to determine [how many volunteers], but I can assure you it wasn't more than 10 people."
ii) 20 T-shirts were printed at a cost of 400 CZK per unit. Where did these T-Shirts go?
iii) The unit rate on the 32mm badges is poor. How many were given away? Were any sold? Where are the remainder?
iv) 3 250 CZK on 24HR express printing was never part of the agreement and suggests poor preparation of the conference.
v) This alone is over 80% of the actual budget overspend when the conference room is taken into account. Considering that neither the quantity nor the overpriced nature of the T-shirts were part of our agreement, these shouldn't figure in the budget at PPI's expenses.
vi) None of this was included in any budget outside printing costs.
8) Other concerns and questions
i) I am concerned about the difference between the withdrawn money and the calculated totals given in the Financial Report. Even so - regardless of whether PP-CZ has properly ring-fenced PPI's money, there are other causes for concern as I will lay out below.
ii) Forex is no excuse. All expenditures were in one currency - CZK. All receipts were cashed at the bank's exchange rate - what was it? This should have been kept under tight control.
iii) Are the rates given for "Registration fees 2" and "Registration fees 3" accurate in CZK?
iv) Let's not forget that part of PP-CZ's offer(1) was on the basis that:
a) "PP-CZ is a well established Pirate Party with a consistent support of about 1 % of voters, our party conferences have 100 attendees -- [PP-CZ] have experience with three events of this size already."
b) "[PP-CZ] hosted a rather successful central European Pirate conference"
v) If the above were accurate, PP-CZ *really* should have known better how to host such an event.
vi) PP-CZ should also have had some party assets (name-tags, marker pens, glue etc) from these prior conferences.
vii) The whole thing smacks of mis-management and an attempt to use PPI funds to bridge the gap in an unacceptable way.
viii) Especially given 7.iv.
ix) *Even more especially* when your extra resource of 10 000 CZK is nowhere to be seen in the Financial Report and PPI is expected to shoulder the whole cost, in direct opposition to the terms of your original offer
x) Of the actual assets bought (T-Shirts, badges, etc.), there is no accounting where they are. Were they given away? Sold?
xi) If you're expecting PPI to pay for them, they become PPI's asset. I need to account for that - at the price they were, they are not notional.


(1) - http://int.piratenpartei.de/Conference- ... rate_Party
(2) - https://www.pirati.cz/_media/fo/spisy/i ... prague.pdf
(3) - http://www.pirati.cz/zo/5_2012
(4) - https://www.pirati.cz/_media/fo/spisy/c ... _ppiga.jpg
(5) - http://www.pirati.cz/_media/fo/spisy/ppiga9.pdf
(6) - http://www.pirati.cz/_media/fo/spisy/ppiga11.pdf
(7) - http://www.pirati.cz/_media/fo/spisy/ppiga7.pdf
(8) - http://www.pirati.cz/_media/fo/spisy/253081649.pdf
(9) - http://www.pirati.cz/_media/fo/spisy/ppiga16.pdf
(10) - http://www.pirati.cz/_media/fo/spisy/ppiga17.pdf
(11) - https://www.pirati.cz/_media/fo/spisy/t ... ctorow.jpg
(12) - http://www.pirati.cz/_media/fo/spisy/ppiga1.pdf
(13) - https://www.pirati.cz/_media/fo/spisy/f ... ocitka.jpg
(14) - http://www.pirati.cz/_media/fo/spisy/fa ... 212012.pdf


I would appreciate your reply.

Thanks,
Ed Geraghty

--
Treasurer, Pirate Parties International

Po dlouhe prokrastinaci jsem na jeho dotazy dnes konecne odpovedel:

Hello Ed et al.,

I have finally come to learn the reasons for inconsistencies in the PPI GA Full financial report and am, therefore, finally able to answer your questions. Apart from that, let me apologize for the horrendous delay of my reply, I don't have any really good excuse for myself so let's just say I'm a lazy person and let's leave it at that.

To your points:

1) As I don't see any question in this particular point, let me just say: Your observation is correct.

2) You're two for two!

3) Correct. I sense a question at this point even though there is none explicitly Well the explanation is easy: Our offer (section Funding) says: "- We can cover the rent and all the necessary expenses (without catering) with just about EUR 15 per person." Nevertheless, once our offer won, we were told by, I believe, Olga Voronina, that we should ask for EUR 25 to 35 per person. Back then, we knew not why that was necessary since we usually try to make events as cheap for everybody as possible, but IIRC we were given some plausible reason why (I really don't remember, but I believe it was something like "you don't know how many people will come so it's better to have more money than not enough") and so we did as was requested and changed the registration fee to EUR 25 for early-birds and EUR 35 for those who would register late. Now, having done that, we actually doubled our expected budget, but we were still pretty modest at that point.

It was only after the first week of registrations when we saw that more than a 150 people registered for the conference and we realized that there's gonna be so much money we wouldn't be able to spend it no matter what we'd do. So basically, we would've fitted in the preliminary budget had we a) known we were supposed to (which we didn't) and b) had only the funds we counted with originally.

Never, during the preparation of the conference, had we been told the event was supposed to be gainful. It was only after the conference that we learned the only real reason for the conference fee raising was to make more money. I believe now is the time to say that at least I, personally, resent the intention to make money off of Pirates travelling hundreds or thousands of kilometers to help the world become a better place. Even more so when I take into account that the PP-CZ did most of the work (and I mean by effing far).

(This should probably figure as 7) v) and 7) vi) but it kinda seems to belong in here too) Also, as you mention later on, the original offer didn't count with any T-shirts having been made (gee, I am not sure about this particular sentence at all grammar-wise speaking, of course). The T-shirt expenditure is roughly 81% of the budget overspent and we were actually also told to get them made by Olga (I hope Mikulas can confirm this because there are no meeting minutes from any of those meetings we had (just some ether-pads with tasks agreed upon)) so we can talk about the price of the T-shirts, but not about them being had made at all.

4) Yes, there was a point when we said, we were gonna get things printed in our Pirate library free of charge and yes, we didn't do so. As to why we didn't do so, it was because the statute amendment proposals and voting ballots were prepared only like a day before the conference and so there wasn't any time to get them printed in the library at that point (previous board's responsibility). The PPCZ had some 80 name-tag covers of their own and we bought 200 more, because we had more than 200 registrations and were expecting a lot of press and people that didn't register. Of these approximately 280 name-tag covers, only 101 were left after the conference (I counted them myself). This is mainly my mistake, because I forgot to have somebody stand in the doorway when people were leaving to tell them to take the name-tag off and return it. It is also partly fault of the board, namely Thomas Gaul, I believe, whom I told to announce that people should return those name-tags when they leave. He didn't do that and when I reminded him, he told me to do it myself which I did, but at that point, it was too late, as a lot of people had already left (and a lot of people had left during the first day of the conference wearing the name-tag which couldn't have been prevented). Name-tag covers are really consumables, you cannot expect those to get returned when you organize an event as big as this one (this September in Barcelona, they told everybody to return the name-tag like seven times and still I saw about 5 of the 40 or so people that didn't return it - world just isn't perfect). As to the nature of the venue, it is a shared work-space, not a kindergarten, I don't see a reason why they should have scissors, glue and markers prepared for their clients. Then again, if we wanted to make a cheap event, we could have done so, but we were explicitly told not to make it cheap (EUR 25-35 per registration is not cheap for Czech standards).

5) I simply disagree. When you talk about personal costs, try to understand I am a student that was working more than "full time" for an international organization. I believe my bus fees were completely within the range of costs that should have been covered by the PPI. If you expect the national parties to offer to host an even, to organize it, get people to come, pay for it and then thank you for giving them the opportunity to work their asses off with no tangible benefit whatsoever, then you should visit a well established mental facility because you really need help. And this is my _personal_ opinion which will be shouldered by the PP-CZ. The banking fees remark doesn't even deserve a reply, it's just silly.

6) i) It has already been paid for from PPCZ's money and refunded from the money received at the conference.
ii) Glad to hear that.
iii) Again, this is an expenditure that wouldn't have occurred had the budget remained the same, but as it doubled, we decided it would be reasonable to try to be as hospitable as possible.
iv) I take that as a "*Sigh*, all right then." Correct me if I'm wrong.

7)i) & ii) Well, T-shirts were given out to most of the volunteers and Me, Marcel Kolaja, Petr Kopac, Mikulas Ferjencik, Jakub Michalek, (these five people were considered the Czech delegation and weren't therefore considered volunteers even though they worked their asses off to make the event happen) and also Olga, Jerry, Cory Doctorow (wanted one for his kid), Wolfgang Preiss and one or two more people not belonging to the PPCZ that I am now unable to account for. I, sincerely, don't care for trying to find who those people were because I know we gave them out only to organizers and Cory which is totally justified.

iii) The badges were all given away, none of them were sold, none remain. The Czech press people each took like 10 of them and ran away (it was a really funny sight - those guys are really low ) The rate is poor you say? You might be right. Well, what can you do.

iv) This, I admit, was entirely our fault and I will make sure this money comes out of PPCZ's pocket. It might take me a few weeks, but it will be transfered back to the PPI GA transparent account.

v) Already mentioned in 3) - It was ordered by the previous PPI board represented by Olga.

vi) Correct.

8) i) I found the mistake in my calculations today. The difference was cause by me returning some of the money I borrowed from PPCZ to pay for small items during the organization. As you can see, the conference fees paid in cash add up to CZK 62 256, but the amounts deposited to the account were CZK 13 261 and CZK 49 632 which comes up to CZK 62 893. The difference between the two sums is exactly CZK 637. I borrowed CZK 5000 from the PPCZ and paid CZK 1728+210+210+210+729+1276 with it. The remained then is exactly CZK 637 which I added to the conference fees (as it was cash) and deposited it along with all the other money to the bank account. I admit it was stupid, but I fortunately found out where the problem was. Therefore, the amount withdrawn is exactly as it should be.

ii) The difference in the real and paper bank account balance was only because I didn't realize the bank charged us additional CZK 25 for each international wire transfer even though they charged the sender as well (this would never occur to me, but fortunately our financial department head pointed it out). Now that I substituted the wire transfer amount with the real wire transfer amount, the numbers add up just fine and the exchange rates work in our favor as they should (we took one euro as CZK 25 and most of the attendees paid in CZK so we made some CZK 20 or so profit out of all of the transactions ).

iii) Yes, they are now. Or rather, the #2 one was accurate since the beginning and the #3 one is accurate since I corrected it.

iv) & v) True, but the people who organized the previous events didn't help with this event so much. Also, the references were supposed to show we're able to do it, not to say we'll do it with no problems whatsoever.

vi) Already answered that one in 6)iii)

vii) Mis-management maybe, I am no experienced organizer or manager, I had limited time, limited experience and a boss (speaking about Olga now) who hates my guts and wanted me to fail every step of the way. I'd say I did a pretty good job if I take all that into account. As for an attempt to bridge some supposed gap, I resent that and I dare say that the only party trying to bridge some gap was Olga when she asked us to raise the conference fees.


I believe I have answered all of the questions (if not, please remind me - there were so many I may have left something out) so let me summarize a little bit:

The PP-CZ hosted an event for more than 150 foreign Pirates, we collected the same fees as the PP-DE collected for the GA in Friedrichshafen (http://wiki.piratenpartei.de/Kreisverba ... h.C3.BCsse), everybody who attended told us the event was awesome and nobody complained about the organization, and in the end, we ended up with a EUR 1700 surplus with no sponsoring whatsoever. We made a lot of mistakes, some of them small, some of them bigger, but in the end, we did all of it honestly, transparently and with good intentions. We didn't know we were supposed to make money for PPI and we didn't know the proposed budget was binding in any way, had we know, things would have gone differently. I would also like to remind everybody interested that neither I nor anybody else from the PPCZ have any legal responsibility or liability in regard to the financial aspect of the conference whatsoever as neither of us signed any written agreement nor knowingly admitted to any kind of responsibility or liability verbally, and our cooperation with the PPI board is, therefore, solely based upon our good will and our intention to maintain a good reputation. We're prepared to send the money to PPI's transparent bank account once it will be opened according to its member's wishes and we hope the PPI board takes its own responsibilities as seriously as it takes the financial affairs of the last GA for the time will come when its members will be held to account for their actions and they should better be ready when that happens.

I bid you all a good day and look forward to your replies.

Yours sincerely,

Tom Vymazal

Je to nechutne dlouhe, ale verim, ze to stoji za precteni, protoze je tam i par dobrych hlasek

[Jan.Kochert]

NAJS ! sem tam preklep ci chybka, ale vzhledem k rozsahu a faktu, ze jsi obhajoval proc jsme nepouzili vlastni stranicke lepidlo..

[anonym72078]

Jeko vyčítat nám nůžky, lepidlo a fixi je fakt hovadina. To jsou spotřební věci.

[V__]

NAJS ! sem tam preklep ci chybka, ale vzhledem k rozsahu a faktu, ze jsi obhajoval proc jsme nepouzili vlastni stranicke lepidlo..

To me zajima, kde mam preklep nebo chybku? V emailovym klientu mam samozrejme zapnuty spell-checker a nekolikrat jsem to po sobe cetl, tak se celkem divim

[V__]

Přijde mi to dobře, že ten člověk snad spadl z višně? Nebo byl tak blbej odhad nákladů předem a on reje do špatného odhadu? Nebo se měly schvalovat změny, když se zjistilo, že se vybere víc peněz?

Pokud bylo v rozpočtu 1000 CZK a měly se z toho platit visačky a podobně - tak to je nějaká chyba. Ale pokud je rozpočet dělaný na polovinu účastníků, tak je jasné, že náklady závislé na počtu lidí budou násobeny. To mu přijde divné?

Popravdě nechápu účel toho prvního textu. Snad jen kdyby nás chtěl potrénovat, kdybychom příště něco dělali třeba z grantů EU, kde se musí prokazovat každá tužka.

[Tomas.Vymazal]

Abych nedelal Edovi spatnou reklamu, tak jen dodam, ze do toho byl donucen predsednictvem PPI, takze Olgou a Gregorym, takze Olgou. Nechci pusobit vztahovacne, ale ta zenska me fakt nenavidi dost na to, aby do toho tahala i jine lidi Ed jen dela svoji praci.