As well as considering all of the details involved in planning a task force meeting, you will need to think about the budget allocation for the meeting and who is responsible for payments. Task force meetings can be funded as part of the GEANT activity budget. If you have any concerns, talk to Annabel Grant who is the Activity Leader for this area in GÉANT.
Agreeing Budget Allocation
The following process should be applied:
- As explained in the public information for potential task force hosts, we typically expect the host to pay for the venue and catering costs. Other costs such as dinner can be covered at discretion, but this is the baseline request for the host.
- If the host can provide some of the costs but not all, it is fine to proceed. Part costs can be covered using the budget parameters shown below.
- If a host cannot be found, GÉANT MAY be able to cover the cost of the meeting but this should not be assumed..
- The GN project may be able to help with travel for some smaller NRENs, please speak to the Activity Leader and the GLAD team.
Meeting Budget
| Type of Cost | Allocation |
|---|---|
| PDO time | Always covered by GÉANT and charged to the appropriate GÉANT budget activity |
| PDO travel costs | Always covered by GÉANT and charged to the appropriate GÉANT budget activity. |
| Chair travel & accommodation costs | Normally covered directly by the chair's own organisation. Typically, chairs from organisations other than NRENs have issues in paying this - they would need to sign a volunteer's agreement if this should be covered by GÉANT. |
| Meeting room | Normally covered by the host. |
| Side-meetings rooms | As above, but only for regular side meetings of task force sub-groups. |
| AV requirements | Beamers should be included in the meeting room cost, as should white board and flipcharts. Where possible, local hosts should provide the 'kit' for video-conferencing, and GÉANT VC rooms used for the meetings, however where this is not possible, H.323 VC can be costly and difficult to provide from a bandwidth/venue perspective, and should be avoided where possible. |
| Daytime catering | Normally covered by the host. If this is an issue, discuss with the Activity Leader. |
| Evening meal | GÉANT does not cover evening meals. The local host can choose to:
|
| Exceptional costs | A contingency budget will be identified by the project for covering exceptional costs not included in the items above. Examples can be travel and accommodation for invited speakers, transportation, extra meeting rooms, meeting utilities. Decisions on whether funding any of these items should be made by the Activity Leader on a case by case basis per meeting. |