Ambassadors,
As some of you may be aware, there have been some changes to how Budget is proposed and allocated for the coming fiscal year. This conversation has been happening on the Council-discuss list, and through meetings with members of the OSAS team: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/council-discuss/2015-October/01374...
With input from the council, OSAS, and other Ambassador Leads, I've taken the results of these budget meetings up until this point, and the discussions around FOSCo/FAMSCo, and created a wiki page to help explain our best understanding of how things should work going forward. The policy seen here is a blend of the results from public discussions and meetings over the past year on mailing lists, in IRC, and at FLOCK:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Budget.next
*tl;dr* - We're proposing 3 delegated roles in each ambassadorial region for treasurer, logistics, and storytelling. We're keeping our reimbursement and other policies as close to the same as possible. There is a now quarterly budget timeline with scheduled FADs and planning. There will be a webpage available in the near-ish future at http://budget.fedoraproject.org where folks can find the budget and policies related to it.
This is not a permanent, set-in-stone policy, but we need to start somewhere, beginning with the new budget year (FY17) and the next Fedora Release (F24.) We can always come back and tinker and change what is on that wiki page, but for now, this is what we'd like to propose to close the loop on budget.
Please read the wiki page, as the daemon is always in the details, and we can use as much informed input and feedback as we can get. I'm hoping to spend about a week gathering feedback, and then move forward implementing these new budget processes together with all of you :)
Thank you Ambassador Leads and fellow council members for your early input and efforts on this. Your feedback helped to round off some of the rough corners, and provided a consistent reminder to adhere to the Fedora-way of defaulting to open.
This formalized regional approach to budget is the first step in working out a larger community-wide strategy around integrating subprojects and other Fedora constituencies with eachother--but that will be a whole nother conversation after this one.
Looking Forward, --RemyD.
On Wed, Nov 4, 2015 at 11:35 PM, Remy DeCausemaker decause@redhat.com wrote:
Ambassadors,
As some of you may be aware, there have been some changes to how Budget is proposed and allocated for the coming fiscal year. This conversation has been happening on the Council-discuss list, and through meetings with members of the OSAS team: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/council-discuss/2015-October/01374...
With input from the council, OSAS, and other Ambassador Leads, I've taken the results of these budget meetings up until this point, and the discussions around FOSCo/FAMSCo, and created a wiki page to help explain our best understanding of how things should work going forward. The policy seen here is a blend of the results from public discussions and meetings over the past year on mailing lists, in IRC, and at FLOCK:
A few comments/questions.
- I would almost prefer to see premier events not be split out separately, and instead force the Council to transparently allocate them from their budget. This would lead to a very large budget for the Council on paper, but it allows us 1) provide transparency around what we view as important enough to spend money on, b) gives us greater flexibility overall to cover events which are going to vary in cost.
- How are the three regional budget delegates going to be chosen?
- Is there an education and review plan to make sure they are successful in these roles?
- What happens if there is difficulty getting 3 people to volunteer for these roles?
- Reimbursement after an Event Report doesn't work very well for premier events. The attendee has already traveled to the event and had their accommodations covered for the most part. That is typically because they have submitted an accepted talk or some other valuable contribution to the event itself. You might wish to rephrase this a bit.
- With only one guaranteed travel accommodation included as a benefit, I fear we're going to run into difficulties deciding who gets that benefit out of the three.
josh
On Fri, Nov 6, 2015 at 7:32 AM, Josh Boyer jwboyer@fedoraproject.org wrote:
A few comments/questions.
- I would almost prefer to see premier events not be split out
separately, and instead force the Council to transparently allocate them from their budget. This would lead to a very large budget for the Council on paper, but it allows us 1) provide transparency around what we view as important enough to spend money on, b) gives us greater flexibility overall to cover events which are going to vary in cost.
It isn't quite clear to me if the Fedora Premier Events are still intended to be the responsibility of OSAS or of the Council. I think moving them to the Council, whether lumped with Discretionary Council Budget or not would be good for transparency and Council flexibility.
How are the three regional budget delegates going to be chosen?
Is there an education and review plan to make sure they are
successful in these roles?
- What happens if there is difficulty getting 3 people to volunteer
for these roles?
I suspect this will be a problem after the excitement of something new wears off.
- Reimbursement after an Event Report doesn't work very well for
premier events. The attendee has already traveled to the event and had their accommodations covered for the most part. That is typically because they have submitted an accepted talk or some other valuable contribution to the event itself. You might wish to rephrase this a bit.
Event reports being required for reimbursement doesn't work that well for lots of situations. And expecting reports with any sort of useful/valid impact analysis to be presented within two weeks of an event is unreasonable. I'm not sure the people we send to an event to promote Fedora are necessarily the best people to do impact analysis anyway, but that is way too short of a window to do much that is meaningful.
I think we would maybe get better reports if we asked for one report per event rather than one report per funded person per event and if we involved marketing/magazine writers to help present the activities at the event rather than relying solely on exhausted ambassadors to do this immediately after an event.
- With only one guaranteed travel accommodation included as a benefit,
I fear we're going to run into difficulties deciding who gets that benefit out of the three.
Yeah, potentially three people do something and one based on some unknown factors gets a big benefit - recipe for unhappy campers.
John
On Fri, Nov 06, 2015 at 09:11:45AM -0600, inode0 wrote:
- I would almost prefer to see premier events not be split out
separately, and instead force the Council to transparently allocate
It isn't quite clear to me if the Fedora Premier Events are still intended to be the responsibility of OSAS or of the Council. I think moving them to the Council, whether lumped with Discretionary Council Budget or not would be good for transparency and Council flexibility.
From the wiki, the word "premier" label means:
* organized by the Fedora community * all about Fedora
I find this a little odd, because the word literally means "most important or best", and I don't think that's actually what we mean.
My preference would be to not use this label for FADs. If we want to keep using the word, let's call Flock _the_ premier global Fedora event, and FUDCons premier regional events. I don't think we even need a special term for FADs.
And, I think *some* FADs make sense from the central community budget (whether we call that the Council budget or something else), while others — like the ambassadors' planning FADs — make sense to me to be part of the regional budgets directly.
This implies regionalizing some things which have not been traditionally in the ambassadors scope — for example, a translation activity day focused a language or languages of a region might be best planned and organized within that region.
[will reply to other points in your message separately]
On Fri, Nov 6, 2015 at 10:51 AM, Matthew Miller mattdm@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Fri, Nov 06, 2015 at 09:11:45AM -0600, inode0 wrote:
- I would almost prefer to see premier events not be split out
separately, and instead force the Council to transparently allocate
It isn't quite clear to me if the Fedora Premier Events are still intended to be the responsibility of OSAS or of the Council. I think moving them to the Council, whether lumped with Discretionary Council Budget or not would be good for transparency and Council flexibility.
From the wiki, the word "premier" label means:
- organized by the Fedora community
- all about Fedora
I find this a little odd, because the word literally means "most important or best", and I don't think that's actually what we mean.
My preference would be to not use this label for FADs. If we want to keep using the word, let's call Flock _the_ premier global Fedora event, and FUDCons premier regional events. I don't think we even need a special term for FADs.
Agreed.
And, I think *some* FADs make sense from the central community budget (whether we call that the Council budget or something else), while others — like the ambassadors' planning FADs — make sense to me to be part of the regional budgets directly.
Also agreed. E.g. a rel-eng FAD would likely come from the central budget.
This implies regionalizing some things which have not been traditionally in the ambassadors scope — for example, a translation activity day focused a language or languages of a region might be best planned and organized within that region.
Yes. Though it might require us to examine the regional budget allocation a bit more closely after the first year to make sure regions are getting enough budget to cover such things.
josh
On Fri, Nov 06, 2015 at 11:15:49AM -0500, Josh Boyer wrote:
My preference would be to not use this label for FADs. If we want to keep using the word, let's call Flock _the_ premier global Fedora event, and FUDCons premier regional events. I don't think we even need a special term for FADs.
Agreed.
Cool. Unless someone has an objection, I'll update the wiki to reflect this in a little bit.
Yes. Though it might require us to examine the regional budget allocation a bit more closely after the first year to make sure regions are getting enough budget to cover such things.
Yeah — this isn't a plan to squeeze people or anything.
On Fri, Nov 6, 2015 at 12:56 PM, Matthew Miller mattdm@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Fri, Nov 06, 2015 at 11:15:49AM -0500, Josh Boyer wrote:
My preference would be to not use this label for FADs. If we want to keep using the word, let's call Flock _the_ premier global Fedora event, and FUDCons premier regional events. I don't think we even need a special term for FADs.
Agreed.
Cool. Unless someone has an objection, I'll update the wiki to reflect this in a little bit.
SGTM +1
Yes. Though it might require us to examine the regional budget allocation a bit more closely after the first year to make sure regions are getting enough budget to cover such things.
Yeah — this isn't a plan to squeeze people or anything.
----- On Nov 6, 2015, at 11:15 PM, Josh Boyer jwboyer@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Fri, Nov 6, 2015 at 10:51 AM, Matthew Miller mattdm@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Fri, Nov 06, 2015 at 09:11:45AM -0600, inode0 wrote:
- I would almost prefer to see premier events not be split out
separately, and instead force the Council to transparently allocate
It isn't quite clear to me if the Fedora Premier Events are still intended to be the responsibility of OSAS or of the Council. I think moving them to the Council, whether lumped with Discretionary Council Budget or not would be good for transparency and Council flexibility.
From the wiki, the word "premier" label means:
- organized by the Fedora community
- all about Fedora
I find this a little odd, because the word literally means "most important or best", and I don't think that's actually what we mean.
My preference would be to not use this label for FADs. If we want to keep using the word, let's call Flock _the_ premier global Fedora event, and FUDCons premier regional events. I don't think we even need a special term for FADs.
Agreed.
+1 too. FAD is smaller than Flock or FUDCon. Some FADs are less than 10 attendees. The process to organize a FAD is also different from FUDCon/Flock's one and budget allocation process should be different too.
And, I think *some* FADs make sense from the central community budget (whether we call that the Council budget or something else), while others — like the ambassadors' planning FADs — make sense to me to be part of the regional budgets directly.
Also agreed. E.g. a rel-eng FAD would likely come from the central budget.
+1 too. This could make regional community more active.
This implies regionalizing some things which have not been traditionally in the ambassadors scope — for example, a translation activity day focused a language or languages of a region might be best planned and organized within that region.
Yes. Though it might require us to examine the regional budget allocation a bit more closely after the first year to make sure regions are getting enough budget to cover such things.
+1. Actually, we are doing something similar this.
Rgds, Tuan
My preference would be to not use this label for FADs. If we want to keep using the word, let's call Flock _the_ premier global Fedora event, and FUDCons premier regional events. I don't think we even need a special term for FADs.
We've discussed this before, but I'll point out again that Flock came out of the NA and EMEA FUDCons. If it is indeed the premier /global/ event, APAC and LATAM have two premier events, including one annually each, and NA/EMEA have one that is only on their own continent every other year.
On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 09:56:11AM -0500, Ruth Suehle wrote:
We've discussed this before, but I'll point out again that Flock came out of the NA and EMEA FUDCons. If it is indeed the premier /global/ event, APAC and LATAM have two premier events, including one annually each, and NA/EMEA have one that is only on their own continent every other year.
I really feel like three (or four) regional events aren't, in total, as valuable as a global one. (Just as a Flock that brings people from EMEA and NA together every year is better than having a double-sized FUDCon in each region every other year.)
I know, though, that gobal travel is very expensive. I'd love to hear people's ideas. What do you (and everyone) think about rolling APAC and LATAM FUDCons in too? Maybe even rotating between all four regions?
Then, maybe we _do_ spend a little more on social events for contributors in the other regions durning the years where Flock isn't there, as bonding time for contributors who can't make the trip. And, for user outreach, focus on non-Fedora-centric events combined with a new meetup strategy.
On Fri, Nov 06, 2015 at 09:11:45AM -0600, inode0 wrote:
Event reports being required for reimbursement doesn't work that well for lots of situations. And expecting reports with any sort of useful/valid impact analysis to be presented within two weeks of an event is unreasonable. I'm not sure the people we send to an event to promote Fedora are necessarily the best people to do impact analysis anyway, but that is way too short of a window to do much that is meaningful.
I'd really like to hear ideas on who (and how, what, etc) would be good for doing impact analysis.
I think we would maybe get better reports if we asked for one report per event rather than one report per funded person per event and if we involved marketing/magazine writers to help present the activities at the event rather than relying solely on exhausted ambassadors to do this immediately after an event.
This makes a lot of sense to me — and in general fits with the the idea of better collaboration/communication between ambassadors and marketing.
- With only one guaranteed travel accommodation included as a benefit,
I fear we're going to run into difficulties deciding who gets that benefit out of the three.
Yeah, potentially three people do something and one based on some unknown factors gets a big benefit - recipe for unhappy campers.
I'd love to live in a world where it'd be easy for us to tell our sponsor that it's worth sending all three from all regions. Maybe we can get there. In the world we have where that might not be possible, I think the best we can do is reduce the "unknown factors".
On Fri, Nov 6, 2015 at 10:58 AM, Matthew Miller mattdm@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Fri, Nov 06, 2015 at 09:11:45AM -0600, inode0 wrote:
Event reports being required for reimbursement doesn't work that well for lots of situations. And expecting reports with any sort of useful/valid impact analysis to be presented within two weeks of an event is unreasonable. I'm not sure the people we send to an event to promote Fedora are necessarily the best people to do impact analysis anyway, but that is way too short of a window to do much that is meaningful.
I'd really like to hear ideas on who (and how, what, etc) would be good for doing impact analysis.
As laid out, event reporters are not (necessarily) doing the analysis, only the reporting. This type of reporting is mostly about reporting raw numbers and gathering links.
--Snipped From Wiki--
- Attendees contacted or reached - Fedora Badges issued at or as a result of the event - Pull requests and patches submitted as a result of event - Bugs reported - Candidates sourced (i.e. Outreachy, GSoC, and/or other FOSS programs) - Articles/Videos/Photos/Content published by or about regional team - Social media mentions and interactions generated by event - Other supporting evidence data that shows the results of your effort - Links to and reach of Posts on Fedora Channels
--Snipped From Wiki--
Most of these elements can be tracked by:
- Keeping a Sign-in sheet at the event - Having a QR code for badge awarding - using tags such as "python3 VFAD" to associate with an event with a PR/Bugzilla Report - Candidate sourced would join the Outreachy or Summer-Coding mail list, and should include which event they started at in their introduction email. - Articles/Content/Videos may be harder to find, but we want them for more than just reimbursement, we want to promote awesome Fedora things. By using a hashtag for an event, we should be able to aggregate some of that stuff from social media. - Anec-data and other personal accounts can be included as a blurb when sending the report. - CommOps and Fedora Social Media Manager (via OSAS) can help promote these, and get metrics too.
As far as analysis, we need to start with data and metrics, which don't necessarily need to be number-crunched by the ambassadors.
I think we would maybe get better reports if we asked for one report per event rather than one report per funded person per event and if we involved marketing/magazine writers to help present the activities at the event rather than relying solely on exhausted ambassadors to do this immediately after an event.
I'm ok with this, which is why having a dedicated storyteller to aggregate the information for an event report was a proposed solution.
This makes a lot of sense to me — and in general fits with the the idea of better collaboration/communication between ambassadors and marketing.
Agreed. Ideally, the storyteller would be working with mktg and commops to get their event promoted on the channels.
- With only one guaranteed travel accommodation included as a benefit,
I fear we're going to run into difficulties deciding who gets that benefit out of the three.
Yeah, potentially three people do something and one based on some unknown factors gets a big benefit - recipe for unhappy campers.
I'd love to live in a world where it'd be easy for us to tell our sponsor that it's worth sending all three from all regions. Maybe we can get there. In the world we have where that might not be possible, I think the best we can do is reduce the "unknown factors".
Yes, preferably we'd be able to get travel funded for all members, but I think that is something that we'd need to make the case for in a future budget cycle. Four regions x three reps = 12 Funded trips, which will be rather costly without having that be a planned portion of the budget.
If there are other benefits for being a regional delegate besides funded event travel, I'd be very interested to hear what people have in mind (Ambassador Polo/Swag kits? Featured articles on the Magazine/CommBlog?)
-- Matthew Miller mattdm@fedoraproject.org Fedora Project Leader _______________________________________________ council-discuss mailing list council-discuss@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/council-discuss
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On Fri, Nov 6, 2015 at 7:32 AM, Josh Boyer jwboyer@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Wed, Nov 4, 2015 at 11:35 PM, Remy DeCausemaker decause@redhat.com wrote:
Ambassadors,
- With only one guaranteed travel accommodation included as a benefit,
I fear we're going to run into difficulties deciding who gets that benefit out of the three.
Agreed. I think it would be fine without this (explicitly guaranteed) benefit. In general case they can get reimbursement through the normal funding request process anyway since their role is acknowledged in the community.
In terms of benefits, I guess it is more of an honor than practical interest. Maybe they can be provided some physical badge or certificate in addition to (online virtual) Fedora badges?
council-discuss@lists.fedoraproject.org
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Alick Zhao -
inode0 -
Josh Boyer -
Matthew Miller -
Remy DeCausemaker -
Ruth Suehle -
Truong Anh Tuan