Just mentioning in a general comment that all 3 previous questions have been looked after in inline-replies.

Lastly, I would like to highlight my concern over what I am interpreting as a fee to attend the event. In the document link you provided in your proposal, you state:

> To have a better control of no-shows amongst registered attendees, we plan to charge a minimal fee (EUR 100 max) the revenue would go directly to the treasury or the revenue of this ticket could lower the treasury exposure by reducing the final/closing invoice amount.

It seems to me that we are doing the opposite of what makes an event such as ETHDenver so successful -> We didn't seek to have sponsors (isolating us) & will be charging for people to attend (less accessible). If the plan to charge this fee is true, this is very disappointing & worries me greatly. I know that we (the ecosystem) will have a fantastic time at Decoded, but if we do not attract many **new** faces, then it's a waste of over €1.3m (over $1.4m). Polkadot Decoded is a general assembly to showcase the ecosystem, I just want to make sure that we won't be mostly showcasing it to just ourselves.

Again, appreciate the time you invested to study the proposal. 

Why do you assume we are intending not to have sponsors, partners, parachain teams? We do expect many of the 50+ chains to be present showcasing their work not only on stage but also in an exhibition. We already received roughly 200 call-for-speaker responses from the ecosystem.

Attracting new faces to Decoded is as well our intention. In order to reach that we will be extending the capacity of the event by 4x. In addition to that we will be imposing the mentioned fee. Why is that? A free event always comes with a very high no-show rate. Folks register and once they decide not to come, they typically do not de-register. Wouldn't probably do it either.
So you usually plan with a 25% no-show rate at free events, what does that mean for capacity planning? You need to do stop registration at a certain ticket count. Which leads to people that are willing to come won't be able to register anymore.
A little fee of under EUR 100 that can be refunded if someone deregister will have the following benefits:
-it will cover Food & Beverage exposure to the treasury (which you criticised earlier on)
-it will minimise the mentioned no-show rate
We are very open to other innovative ideas that deliver the same expected outcome though.


Thank you for taking the time to put together this proposal! I just have one question & one comment I'd like to see expanded on.

**My question revolves around the breakdown of some of the costs outlined in the proposal. Could you please explain the process for calculating your cost estimates?**

I am particularly interested in better understanding the costs for "Food and beverages" which are currently cited to be a total sum of €220,000 (~$238,000). Now, I could just be lacking an understanding of some things, but at first glance, this seems like an insanely high figure, especially when considering that this is just a 2-day event, or approximately €110,000 (~$190,000) a day on food.

Last year at Decoded, all we had were canned sodas & Cheetos (which I enjoyed very much & was quite happy with). I'm not saying the standard should be sodas & Cheetos forever moving forward, but this seems like a massive leap. 

I'm curious how these costs are calculated, justified, & why they are needed.

**My comment revolves around the audience focus for the event:**
> Polkadot Decoded aims to be a general assembly for all things Polkadot/Kusama. However, we are mainly focusing on decision makers and enterprises.

Personally, I believe this is a flawed & counterproductive approach. Other ecosystems focus on attracting regular users & everyday builders first & foremost. Then, we see them seize on partnerships & adoption involving nationally & internationally recognized brands in large waves, in large part because they have attractive user bases. Meanwhile, we have been doing the opposite; prioritizing attracting big institutional names, yet struggling to see the same degree of adoption with them as other ecosystems.

If Polkadot Decoded aims to be a general assembly for all things Polkadot/Kusama, then it should be focused on being a general assembly for all. This is why ETHDenver succeeds, and honestly, ETHDenver results (and vibes) should absolutely be the long-term goal here. Plus, then Polkadot Decoded can evolve into a true community event that the community (& future ecosystem sponsors) can ultimately uptake (& help fund) in the future.

Hey @invarchitect - thanks for taking the time to review this proposal. I am replying as Head of Events for Parity, but all personal opinions. 
Regarding your F&B calculation unfortunately I have to say that it is faulty. We expect 2,000 attendees max. and will provide snacks, lunch, drinks, fruits all day plus some surprises. So if you divide 220k by 2,000 and by 2 days - you end up w/ 55 EUR per person per day. For Denmark that is a bargain. Usually in Europe for a conference F&B fee it's between 85 and 110 EUR.
Also your memory is not correct regarding Decoded 2022 - we had snacks and drinks and fruit within the halls and a whole food truck court outside on both days. The F&B costs for 2022 were much higher than EUR 55 per day.

Regarding your challenged target audience - our other platform event sub0 focusses on builders only, and yes - we are aiming for having Decoded evolve to a general assembly indeed. You will probably and hopefully see once our agenda and side tracks overview is published that it will have a broader scope than last year.

Thank you for the response, [@jeo.ric](https://polkadot.polkassembly.io/user/jeo.ric) - I should have clarified that I was basing my statement on my experience at Polkadot Decoded in NYC, where the F&B provided was various soda & chip products. 

Regarding F&B, I would like to highlight that I didn't make a calculation, just expressed that the numbers seem high. Your calculations do seem to be inflated, though. Would you mind providing any links to the sources that you are referencing regarding the anticipated costs for this year to help clarify your calculation?

Doing my research, I see [here](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_result.jsp?country=Denmark&displayCurrency=EUR) that the average costs for food are closer to around €19 & less than double that if you calculate beverage costs. The costs you cited are closer to a couple (2 people) going out to eat for a 3-course meal at a restaurant. I found a [second source](https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/country/denmark?currency=EUR) that cites similar costs as the first source I referenced at the start of this paragraph.

My concern is that this is a lot of money & without much of an explanation or details as to how it is calculated. What I am asking myself is, "is it worth it to spend €220,000 on this?"

Also, to clarify, I am not looking to dismiss the need for this sum of money for food, I want the event to be a big success; however, I want to make sure that treasury funds are being spent responsibly & in the most optimal ways possible.

Hmm, so you are calculating general living expenses for an event? This is similar to applying average industry worker rates for a software development project. Isn't it?
In addition you were not comparing similar projects. Decoded 2022 took place in Berlin, not in NYC. The  event in NYC was a satellite event hosted by a parachain.

Also, I would like to know if you could please explain how you calculated the need for €300,000 towards marketing?

I was originally going to ask how the €300,000 would be spent & to ask for a breakdown of the marketing strategy, but I see here from the document link you provided in your proposal that:

> Due to early timing, a marketing plan will follow once we are closer to the event with a detailed demand generation plan and budget.
For now only some paid social media costs for the call-for-papers process are included in proposal 1 of 3.

While I am also concerned that a marketing plan has not already been created (and increasingly concerned that one will not be made until closer to the event date), I am more curious how the sum of €300,000 was calculated without an actual marketing plan in place to reference or follow.

Could you please produce a marketing plan for the community to reference and/or explain how the projected need for €300,000 was calculated? This is a large sum to ask for while also admitting that an actual marketing plan doesn't yet exist. 

@InvArchitect - again thanks for studying the Decoded proposal. I don't think it is fair to assume that no marketing plans exists just because it hasn't published in a document that is open to the wider public. The budgeting for this allocation has been made by the very experienced Parity Digital Marketing team and will be mainly spend online in various channels. We won't be sharing our media plan ahead of time.

Hey Community,
during motion stage of this proposal questions came up on Twitter regarding the venue budget amount.
I'd like to proactively reply to these here:
Fact a) the proposal is asking to cover all venue costs of approximately EUR 160k;
Fact b) Twitter user Mellow Yellow (@dotsamaape) is speculating about a 240% margin as he received a venue offer for EUR EUR 47k;

Reply: the pure rental of the proposed venue per day is indeed EUR 23.5k per day. However we need to take into account that an event of this size needs at least 2 setup days (we calculated 3) and a dismantling day. It also needs furniture rental, security, electricity, venue staff, side rentals such as production offices, outdoor areas, permits, etc. 
In addition to all that the Danish VAT of 25% is not reclaimable, even if you are a registered company within the EU - event costs are not falling under the EU directive for reverse charge. 

Its quite simple really, if you want €1.4 million then at least provide a proper breakdown of exact costs/quotes etc. 

You are Parity so should be setting best practices in the industry and leading by example on these type of things.

Also, on a side note what is Parity relationship to Brainsurfers are they ex parity team? Also, are you sure about the VAT situation as Brainsurfers is not in the EU anyway as its registered in Switzerland and online suggests it is recoverable. 

Finally - I hope you have something up your sleeve as I have no idea how you are spending €300k marketing on an event that only insiders go to historically - not sure why you need to pay influencer costs.. are you targeting people outside in Web 2 who are not on twitter etc 

reply to a comment by 16GJ9vyagGbXQWzTxsGycAXFcmAeojS3w7wh6VqmYcFtjyam:

VAT costs on events are not reclaimable but partly deductible if the event organiser is registered in the same country. It doesn't need to have an office there, but a VAT-ID of that country. VAT than is only deductible from the event revenue. And community opinion so far has been that the revenue (from tickets) should be minimal, as  we will only be taking deposits instead of a registration costs. Deposits than will be reimbursed after checking-in at the venue.
Reference: https://www.wonderfulcopenhagen.com/guidelines-vat 

However - we are still talking to tax advisors in Denmark and the home country for these questions and if it turns out there is a way to avoid paying VAT, of course the treasury proposal (post-event) in July will reflect that.

Brainsurfers (as already mentioned in the proposal) delivered sub0 2022 in Lisbon, they are not former Parity people. 

The marketing cost you are referring to will be broken down further in proposal 2 of 3 in May. It will say how much spending goes into different campaigns. Such as promoting the Call-for-Speakers process on Twitter, driving online registrations, creating footage for social media, etc.

Polkadot Decoded is the Flagship conference and the the biggest yearly event focused on all things Polkadot. And it's back for its fourth edition on June 28th and 29th, 2023, with a fully hybrid experience of online and in-person events. Decoded aims to evolve into a general assembly for all things Polkadot/Kusama.

In 2023 we will come to Copenhagen, Denmark with an increased capacity  and there will be simultaneous satellite events hosted regionally in the USA, Europe, LatAm and China in July. These satellite events are aimed to be regionally focused. Whereas the Flagship event will be globally focused. 

The program line up will be featuring presentations, panels, workshops, demos, fireside and barcamp chats. We are focusing on curating content that is more high-level for a broader audience as well as attracting decision makers and enterprises into the room. The target audience will be crossing over all six of our target personas: Business Decision Maker, Technical Decision Maker, both from startups and Enterprises interested in Polkadot, Builders from teams in the Polkadot ecosystem, DOT Holders,  Developer, Polkadot enthusiasts and supporters. Polkadot Decoded aims to be a general assembly for all things Polkadot/Kusama. However, we are mainly focusing on decision makers and enterprises. 

Further information on the proposal, including milestones, budget, agenda, participants and more can be found under this [LINK](https://docs.google.com/document/d/15OgE-hsNGepFpN-xgLDG1x5cHWJ55ltYroMGHaQnYQM/edit?usp=sharing).

Approve a proposal. At a later time, the proposal will be allocated to the beneficiary
and the original deposit will be returned.

May only be called from `T::ApproveOrigin`.

# <weight>
- Complexity: O(1).
- DbReads: `Proposals`, `Approvals`
- DbWrite: `Approvals`
# </weight>

#382 Polkadot Decoded 2023, tranche 1/3 (June, Copenhagen, DK)