Talk:Burn Rate

While this is an interesting financial article, what does it have to do, specifically, with conventions?

This isn't meant to be a financial primer site.

Yes and no. You are right, it isn't a primer site. And yet there will be people who have no clue as to how to make and monitor a good budget. If they have to learn everything the hard way, it makes for a very rocky journey. --Bill Taylor 16:53, 27 March 2007 (PDT)

But "Burn Rate" has almost no meaning in SF conventions as there isn't a chance to go back to shareholders or venture capitalists to get more money in. As a discussion on "Cash Flow" (which is the link I found that brings me here) then that's fine, but introducing jargon from another area that is a poor fit at best is likely to add confusion or cause people to skip past what is actually a potentially useful article, certainly that was my immediate response and while I may or may not be a typical user of this site, I believe that my response is valid. So yes, an article or group of articles on Budget is a great thing, but a discussion on "Burn Rate" as opposed to Cash Flow is esoteric. Of course most of my convention running experience (up to and including committee on several worlcons) has been in the UK and Europe and perhaps the US is more "corporate". But in which case I'd expect if it is more "professional" in the US then the people controlling the finances would have appropriate training and qualifications and as such, this would be teaching them to suck eggs. YMMV :-) --Magician 10:36, 28 March 2007 (BST)

The context of this article is for a department head that has been either handed a budget, or is responsible for creating a reasonable one. Income to the Con would be incidental to that, and for most departments they really don't have an income source, other than from a budget increase from the ConCom. Which assumes the ConCom has set a ddecent reserve (a different article). However, if an article on Cash Flow is needed or would set a better context for anyone that visits, then certainly that would be welcome. Or just expend on this one with additional alternatives. I was trying to keep it simple, on the theory that more experienced people would know this stuff, but maybe that could be reworked. If this is a terminology issue, then I suppose I'd like to see what your view of the world is.

Remember, especially in the area of Finance, the goal is to ensure 1) the Con doesn't do something stupid that will make them go broke, and 2) that if they do, or something just flat goes wrong, that they have time and tools to detect and correct it before disaster strikes. That means refresher articles for old hands that might need tips, and articles for newbies that are trying to start from nothing. --Bill Taylor 07:36, 28 March 2007 (PDT)

If this is a terminology issue, then I suppose I'd like to see what your view of the world is.

I thought I'd already said. My view of the world is that a convention is not a Dot Com business. That terminology that is appropriate to convention runners is good and that terminology that is confusing or from a totally different area, unless it has some large benefit, should be avoided.

Having an article entitled "Burn Rate" is my major problem. No one I've ever worked with on conventions (and I've been going to them for 27 years and working on them for 24) has *ever* used the term "Burn Rate".

But perhaps I didn't understand your question about "I suppose I'd like to see what your view of the world is." can you expand on that?

--Magician 07:53, 28 March 2007 (PDT)