Re: I'm baaaacccckkkkk!

["David VanderWall" <dvanderwall@uswest.net>]

Hi everyone,

The budget looks reasonable, except for a few things:

It just doesn't cost $10 to make a CD-R.  I think Erik might have been
generalizing with that figure way back when and might have been including
shipping costs, his time, etc.  I just had a bunch of CD-Rs made for work
and $6 per CD-R was the most I paid, and that included printing and a jewel
case.  That was at a professional duplicator.  You can get 30-packs of CD-Rs
at Best Buy, Circuit City, Target, etc. for $30 -- that's a buck a CD plus
the cost of a jewel case and maybe a shipping container.  Your shipping
container price is probably already included in the $2 cost per CD for
shipping, which is also a little high.  (All dollar figures are U.S.)  Then
again if we will have international judges then your CD shipping cost figure
is a little low.

Anyway, if I were on the AGA-MC, and that "Judges' CD" figure was put in
front of me, I would question it.  I would think $6 per is more reasonable.
Maybe Erik will have something to say about this.

Also I don't feel we should let anyone sponsor a particular category just
yet.  It just sounds too problematic to me, and I think James touched on
that a little.  What if everyone sponsors the same category, etc.?  Unless
someone has a solid plan for dealing with this I think we should scrap the
idea for now.

James wrote:
Mailing costs for Prizes:
In the worst case scenario - where we have to store and ship real prizes,
the postage cost is going to depend on where the winners are from. If we
take as an average the sum of $20.00 per item to safely ship prizes, the
cost of this would be:
13 X $20.00 = $260.00

This is another one of those things where I'm putting myself in the shoes of
someone reading over this proposal.  I don't know how you are going to word
the ideas about covering the prize mailing costs, but $20 per prize seems
like it's out of left field.  A gift certificate isn't going to cost
anywhere near $20 to ship, we know that.  So how much do you stand to come
in under budget here?  Coming in under budget isn't as bad as going over,
but it still doesn't look good (especially if it is a lot).  If $20 is an
average, and we are going to be shipping out some smaller items, what is
going to cost more than $20 to ship?  Keep in mind here that the prizes will
have to get to us somehow, so most likely they will be ready to ship and we
will not have to spend any extra time or money on packaging.  Anyway, maybe
we can give a minimum/maximum figure here?  Assume $30 is the maximum cost
per item and $0.50 (or actually $0.33 if you're sending a letter from the
U.S. to the U.S., but we'll use $0.50) is the minimum.  That's $390 max. and
$6.50 min.  That's a huge difference!  Maybe we should be realistic and
include in the proposal that we are well aware of this problem and are
trying to be fair with our figures?  When you're talking about something
that _could_ comprise over a third of the total cost I think it's right to
include a detailed explanation of our thinking here and maybe even include
several _possible_ figures for the shipping costs.  Unfortunately I can't
back this up with any detailed analysis right now as I'm getting ready to go
on vacation.  I can help when I get back on the 18th.  If you read through
the archives I presented some shipping figures on 9/5/99 that use Priority
Mail from the USPS and assume a 3 pound package.  I recall writing another
one that broke it down further, but I don't remember exactly.

So, just a few thoughts there.  Otherwise it looks real good.


Dave VanderWall
Minneapolis, MN



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