pcplantdb

[Richard Morris <webmaster@pfaf.org>]

John Schinnerer wrote:
> > I *do*
> > know that wages/overhead should not exceed 20% of total budget costs.)
>
>
> This may be problematic for this sort of project, depending on what is meant
> by "wages/overhead"...
>
> In the tech industry, computer hardware and other overhead is typically cheap
> compared to wages for the highly skilled people to run/use/apply it.  Seems
> like most of the $ we want is to pay ourselves for doing the work.  What would
> the other 80% be spent on "normally?"

Other things to account for the 80% (in a normal project)
        1) Travel 10%. If we need to meet its $700 a pop for
                me to come over.
        2) Office costs, phone, internet, stationary, rent - 25%
        3) Accounts, insurace
        4) Research tools - books, journal subscriptions
                Ken could easily spend $500/year on book
                with the more academic info. I've seen 5 volume
                works listing authorative plant names which cost
                several hundred pounds.
        5) dissemination, presentations, conference visits
        6) Hardware a new pc for everyone, server costs.
                Digital cameras, scanners, support contracts
        7) Software costs, licences for dreamweaver, flash
                php, mySql (ah they are open source). If its
                MS then we are all going to need Windows (CE_ME_NT)
                licences.
        8) License costs, we might want to license other
                datasets/photo galleries. Could be pricey.
                Might even want to licence the pfaf dataset
                (a bit cheeky).
        9) Marketing/publicity costs. Too make it really happen
                we need to attract a user base. Rellying on
                free internet forms of publicity might not be enough.

I might be able to get my hands on a typical academic research
proposal. Which could give a good indecation of auxilarry costs.
Folklaw has it the the typical CS research grant employing
1 post doc, 1 research student and 10% of a professor comes
to quarter of a million pounds when all the extras are added!

Another thing we are going to need to work out is a time line
for the project, with the different stages in the project
clearly identified, estimates for time for each stage.
Something like
        6 month system design
        1 year implementation
        3 month evaluation
        3 years data input


                Rich
--
Plants for a Future: 7000 useful plants
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