Report from the Treasurer

CUG 2008, completed approximately a month ago, and was very successful. Ville Savolainen and his team put on a great conference.  The meeting facilities were great, the food was excellent, and the Night Out was most enjoyable especially with the bluegrass band.  Our colleagues at ORNL will have to work hard to continue the exceptional meetings we have had the last few years in Lugano, Seattle, and Helsinki.  Based on meetings with the host planners, I am sure that they will be up to the challenge for CUG 2009 in Atlanta.

To-date, there have been no payments made to CSC for CUG 2008.  Early estimates indicate CUG 2008 will have cost about $144,000 resulting in an approximate loss of $10,000.  There were budget-planning issues early on that led to this expected shortfall.  The most significant issue in my opinion was the lack of annual fixed CUG costs not being in the budget until after several major decisions were made. This issue was not detected early because of the change in Treasurer. The declining US Dollar, relative to the Euro, also contributed to the shortfall since the majority of expenses are invoiced as Euros. Another factor that led to this was that the budget planned for a high amount of sponsor dollars, which then leads to the scenario where it is hard to find even more money to cover a loss.

At this point, we are halfway through the CUG fiscal year, and things are looking good.  As mentioned above, the conference is likely to result in a $10,000 loss, but is expected.  And other spending is tracking at planned spending levels.

As of June 14, 2008, CUG had assets of $226,725 and with several outstanding liabilities.  There are still expenditures for CUG 2008 (noted above), contracts, proceeding development and CUG office support as expected. 

CUG has enough assets to ride through a single failed conference should one occur in the future. Our planning goal, which we are on track to meet, is that in the unlikely event of a failed conference CUG would still be in a strong position to support the next year’s conference.

With over 147 attendees at the annual meeting this year, things seemingly look good for CUG membership.  However, membership has continued to hold steady around 39 sites.  A new “Associate Site” classification was approved at CUG 2008 that was hoped to help increase membership.  With the steady state of membership, there was concern that membership would not increase especially with the recent surge in “supersites” like ORNL that provide computing resources for many sites that in the past might have had a Cray computer of their own. However, this new classification was met with some heated debate and no memberships of this type will be granted until at least next year.

Looking forward to seeing you Atlanta in 2009.

Mark R. Fahey

Cray User Group - Treasurer