Apricot 08 Task Force Report to Council 20/10/05

The task force

The APRICOT08 Task force membership includes

• Grant Forsyth, chair
• David Farrar
• Chris Streatfield
• Michael Wallmannsberger
• Peter Macaulay
• Keith Davidson, ex oficio

The task force has not met in person but has exchanged emails on the subject and depending on the decision of Council on the recommendation below, will progress its work appropriately.

APRICOT

APRICOT is the Asia Pacific Regional Internet Conference on Operational Technologies. The conference is held annually and to learn more about the conference and its organisation go to www.apricot.net

Each year the APRICOT advisory committee circulate a request for proposal from regional organisations interested in hosting a future APRICOT conference. The call proposals for APRICOT 2008 was published some months ago.

APRICOT 2007

Last year InternetNZ prepared and presented a proposal to host APRICOT 2007. While a very comprehensive a professional proposal was developed that required considerable detailed technical input to scope the network requirements necessary to meet the RFP InternetNZ was spared the majority of that cost as our professional conference organisers sought and were awarded Tourism NZ funding.

To meet the requirements of multiple rooms over the 10-11 days of meetings and complex networking requirements, two venues were considered. They were the Aotea Centre and Sky City. The key financial figures were:

Delegates 400 600

Costs Fixed 791,125 791,125

Commission to APIA 100,000 100,000

Variable 210,033 281,767

TOTAL 1,101,158 1,172,893

Revenue Registration fees 279,111 371,733

Sponsorship 620,000 620,000

Network sponsorship 200,000 200,000

TOTAL 1,099,111 1,191,733

Profit(loss) (2,047) 18,840

At previous APRICOT meetings the attendances have been:

2001 Malaysia 888

2002 Thailand 645

2003 Taiwan 1035

2004 Malaysia 931

2005 Japan 859

The key figures to note are the requirement for $620,000 and $200,000 of sponsorship just to make the budget balance.

APRICOT 2008 RFP

I and the InternetNZ have undertaken a comparison of the RFP requirements between the 2007 and 2008 RFP and can discern little difference between the two.

There are still very demanding hosting requirements, including a commission on sponsorship to be paid to APIA - which drive high costs and continuing modest proposed fees which severely limit revenues.

If a proposal was to be submitted, it must be completed and submitted by 1 December 2005.

Keith is checking with the hosts of the APRICOT 2006 in Kyoto Japan, to better understand how they faired financially and importantly how much sponsorship they received from multinationals (eg CISCO, Juniper, HP). There is a real concern that NZ is not likely to attract as much multinational sponsorship and with a much smaller national hi-tech networking industry, we are much more dependent on multinational sponsorship over national sponsorship.

Conclusion

Given the close similarity (almost identical) of the RFP requirements between 2008 and 2007. One should expect that the solution required for 2008 will be very similar to that identified for 2007 with the associated high costs.

Before proceeding with the time, effort and expenditure of developing a proposal for 2008 (while the 2007 proposal effort cost INZ very little, we can not be certain of further Tourism NZ funding), it is felt prudent to check with Council as to Council's wish to take onboard the significant liability of over $650,000+ short fall between revenue and expenditure.

To that end the following resolutions are offered for Council decision.

Resolutions

• Cessation: Given the expected significant shortfall between revenue and expenses, Council respond to the Apricot advisory committee that InternetNZ does wish to proceed with developing a proposal.

• Continue: Embark on the development of the proposal using the same professional conference organisers and associated technical specialist in order to save time and reutilise as much of the 2007 proposal, while at the same time:
  a) approach the organisers to see if there is any capacity to address the imbalance between revenue and costs (ie. increase the fees, simplify the requirements and restructure the commission back to APIA on a "after profit basis"; and
  b) have the InternetNZ office approach the local offices of prospective multinational sponsors to gauge their likely support for our hosting Apricot 08.
  
  Then proceed with completing the proposal only if the projected financial shortfall (before sponsorship) can be reduced to a manageable number (number to be set by Council).