Lack of support for Fudcon Latam.

[Robyn Bergeron]

Hi,


On Fri, Sep 6, 2013 at 12:34 PM, Alejandro Pérez <
alejandro.perez.torres at gmail.com> wrote:

> This is something I have been thinking from quite some time now and I
> have been worried about that.
>
>
> We started organizing Fudcon Latam before there was a date for Flock, we
> did meeting and have assigned ticket to sponsor people for almost two
> months ago, no ticket has been bought 20 days before the event, my
> feeling it that there is not love for the event or the region for that
> matter, we have been given lots of excuses and delays on the matter.
> Today at this moment only people who had bought his own ticket are sure
> they will go and them still waiting to get reimbursed.
>
> Many people is thinking on not going now as it is not sure if they ever
> get the tickets.
>
> It will be a shame that people keep losing interest on participate on
> the event.
>
> This is what made me sad, we as volunteers that work on Fedora and give
> our time trying to do as we can to help Fedora from Latam with our few
> resources I do not feel we deserve be treated like that.
>
>
I'm not particularly thrilled with the situation either, but I'm doing what
I can.  After sorting out what I could from the details - and then getting
on over the weekend to purchase tickets and finding that I had more
questions around a lot of details that didn't quite align (mismatched dates
of travel in different places, etc.) - I finally got answers, spent a good
part of my week dealing with everyone in my house having the stomach flu,
and started buying tickets today.

I'm still trying to deal with figuring out how to get $3,000 USD down to
Alex to do purchases for the event (which I just found out about the need
for a week or so ago); he can't take paypal, just western union or wire
transfer, but the fact that the money is needed in advance rather than as a
reimbursement is making this incredibly difficult. If anyone has any
solutions, I'd love to hear them. The vendors can't take US credit cards,
as I understand it.

To come out of the dark and dreary, I suppose - hopefully we can take some
lessons learned here and make sure this doesn't repeat itself in the
future. I think it's clear that we've had some miscommunication here, or
things going unknown/unseen until the last second. I know from
planning/helping out with wayyyy too many FUDCons that it's incredibly
difficult to stay on top of what is going on unless you have a good hand in
participating throughout the planning process; if the person who is paying
bills can't attend meetings, it's probably a good idea to ensure that the
local planning lead and whoever is paying the bills are having regular
meetings together to go over details about what's remaining. And having a
detailed plan of what needs to be purchased by when - particularly for
things that need to be purchased locally - is always smart to have as well.

Anyway, when all is said and done, we should come back and take a look at
improving the existing documents around how to plan a FUDCon, and make sure
that clear responsibilities for communication and ownership exist for
specific responsibilities.

I know that everyone down in LATAM is doing what they can for Fedora, as
are the contributors all over the rest of the planet. And I know you guys
have had a fairly difficult time getting dependable support over the years
- it comes and goes. It's never been my intention or wish that you guys
feel slighted, so I'm sorry that this has gone poorly for you.

For those folks with outstanding tickets - they will have their tickets
purchased. And those with outstanding reimbursements will get their money
back. (I will try and sort through which ones are outstanding over the
weekend; I can see in some places that things are marked as paid, but I
can't tell which, if any, have been reimbursed, or not.) And for those
folks where I've asked questions - I keep finding tickets still with links
to flights that aren't valid / don't work, or I get links that point to a
giant page with many options; if you don't have specifics detailed in your
tickets, please, please, for my sanity and your ticket, put flight numbers
and times in the ticket :)

-Robyn
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/fudcon-planning/attachments/20130906/0356349e/attachment.html>