Warning: This email is long. I don't know how to avoid that. I debated making this a wiki, but I think we need more discussion that just editing. There is no tl;dr. If you want a tl;dr perhaps you should wait a while and participate near the end of the conversation.
Warning: The opening text is the same for both Part I and Part II.
During 2016 I had the privilege of helping to plan and execute Flock and attended both FUDCon LATAM (Puno) and FUDCon APAC (Phnom Penh). Talking to people has led to me to believe that these events may not be meeting all of our goals. Specifically we are spending a lot of time and money on them and may not be getting our full value. I also heard a lot of comments about how the events are not equal from people who thought they should be and not well distributed across the world from people who thought they should be. This led me to believe that there is a lot of confusion about why we do these events and what we want out of them.
Since it is easier to edit than to create, I am going to propose some ideas. My goal is less to present this as a polished proposal ready for a vote and more to allow us to have a discussion around the finer points of the events strategy. It would be nice to see this discussion come to an end by the end of March so that it can have impact this year. The planning for Flock will begin soon (see my another of my emails today) but the FUDCon processes are not heavily started, as far as I can tell.
Additionally, while history is important, I think it is equally important that we consider what we want to accomplish today and in the next few years, not just what we tried to accomplish in the past. Therefore I've written this without too much reference to what is being changed and instead as an idea of what we should be doing. I look forward to folks bringing forward suggestions for continuing activities from the past or better incorporating lessons learned that I may have missed.
I look forward to your feedback and input.
regards,
bex
# Flock
Flock is described by most people to me as the "Fedora Contributor Conference." Therefore, I'd like to see us put together a structure to continue to make that statement more and more accurate. If we are going to have a contributor conference, I think we need to understand why having one is important. I have been told that we need Flock for these reason (I am sure I am missing some):
## Goals
* Increased Contributor Bonding - Contributors should meet each other in person and strengthen their relationships. We are a far-flung remote community and at times we forget about the person behind the FAS ID. Fedora works best when we work together.
* Increased Project Cohesion - The Fedora Project is a huge complex set of moving pieces and fantastic people. At times it can be hard to know or remember what is going on and what we are working on. Flock should provide a touchstone to keep all parts of the project interconnected.
* Presentation and Discussion of Large Ideas - Some ideas just aren't well served by a wiki page and an email thread. When we make major changes (think rings or editions) we need to talk them over. We need presentations and forums for face to face discussions.
* Work - Yes, this is what FADs are for, but we can save money and time if we schedule work sessions in a place where we are already going to have the right people present (see more later). Flock has been described by several people as needing to be more of a "do conference" instead of a "talk conference." I agree that if we are having a *contributor* conference we should focus on *contribution.*
* Cross-pollination - Having contributors from all over the project in one place creates the opportunity for a fantastic hallway track (informal, unplanned conversations and working groups). Problems being solved in one area may be the answer for problems being discovered in another. We may find out that we have multiple groups working on the same problem in different ways and that working together may help (or conversely allowing them to have a compare/contrast session may help).
## Programming
Moving Flock more toward a "do" conference means that we should change the way we develop the program. Specifically, I believe that we should ask people why their talk and workshop proposals should be included in greater detail.
### Theme
I believe the council should, with community input, set some themes for each Flock. These themes are not absolutes, but instead should be one of the many factors considered when looking at programming submissions. This way we can also help keep Flock focused on doing.
### Talks
Talks will always be part of Flock, however, we can ask a few more questions to help the committee choose them.
1. How is this talk focused on contributors? Why should contributors attend it? Which contributors should attend? How will this talk foster greater contribution to Fedora? 2. If this talk is about a specific piece of software or technology, why is presenting it at Flock better than presenting it as a Fedora-inspired talk at another conference? 3. What actions will you be taking as a result of the feedback you receive on this talk? What actions are you looking for your audience to take?
### Workshops/HackFests/etc.
We need more focused work and planning sessions. However, for them to be successful, we need to make sure they are planned for success from the beginning. Therefore, I believe we should ask questions like this:
1. What specific goals do you have for this session. What is your specific agenda? What problem(s) are you trying to solve? 2. Who specifically needs to be present in order for the goals of this session to be met? 3. What activities will be done prior to Flock to ensure success and that all attendees are ready for this activity?
## Funded Attendance and Costs
I was told by several people that they felt like most non-EMEA and non-NA contributors were not encouraged to attend Flock. Several people related stories about how they had been told that because their region had a FUDCon they should attend that instead. This sentiment was usually relayed to me during a conversation about funded attendance. I want to address this through our structure.
I believe that Flock should be explicitly open to anyone and built for Fedora Contributors. If someone is not a Fedora Contributor they should recognize they may not get a lot out of attending Flock. That is OK. We will have other opportunities for them.
The flip side of this is that we had a significant number of registered attendees for Flock 2016 who did not attend. This cost money in terms of wasted catering and prepaid expenses. I am told that this year was exceptionally heavy in terms of no-shows, but that we routinely have a significant number of no-shows and unregistered attendees. We need to find a way to ensure that when we budget for someone's attendance that they really come.
I think that we should consider funded attendance from several angles:
### Tickets
Flock has expenses that are not necessarily part of the "funding" of a funded attendance. This could be meeting room costs or the costs or a group lunch or evening activity. Some of these costs are fixed for the event (e.g. Meeting room rental) and some are per attendee (e.g. Evening activities). Therefore I think we should set a ticket price equal to the cost of all per attendee costs. This means that a ticket will cover the cost of these items, and not make a profit.
However, not everyone should have to pay for their ticket. I believe we should adopt a strategy similar to OpenStack. OpenStack provides free admissions for all active contributors. We should define contributor activity and provide a similar benefit. Defining an active contributor is hard, but we can probably start with something like "generated X fedmsg events in the last year" or "acknowledged as a contributor by a subproject." I think it needs to be more than "cla+1" but flexible enough to account for work that may not be commit oriented.
If only active contributors attend Flock then no tickets will actually be sold. This is OK. However, non-contributors who attend will pay the costs of their attendance. This may help those folks understand that there are better Fedora events for them to attend. This should also reduce the issue with no-show non-contributors. It won't help with no-show contributors[0]. I also believe it is reasonable to have a refund policy in place for those with a documented reason for not showing up (illness, etc.). I think we can solve this by adopting a policy like many other events of offering refund schedules, etc. This should not be a heavy process and it should actually not be a huge burden.
### Funded Travel
We cannot afford to cover all of the costs of all of our contributors for Flock. There is currently no budget probability of this changing. Therefore we need to figure out a way of choosing who gets funding and how much more deliberately. I believe we should do this by creating a more complete funding application.
We can assign points or use some other method to rank applications. I think that points of consideration should include:
* Is this person an active contributor? (see above) * Is this person on "people needing to be in the room" list (see above)? * Is this person a contributor in the general areas of focus of Flock (we will know this once the program is set)? * How will the Fedora project benefit through your attendance at Flock? * How will you benefit (specifically) from your attendance at Flock?
As far as funding levels, I believe our default funding for active contributors should be the cost of the ticket mentioned above and 0% travel. After that travel funding can range from partial to full.
I believe we also need to strongly encourage attendees to seek outside funding. I believe we can do this by explicitly asking some questions about employment. Note: Employment is not a factor in funding consideration for anyone. All community members are equal regardless of employment or lack thereof.
* How does your work in Fedora relate to your work, if you have a $dayjob? * Have you spoken with your employer and specifically asked for some funding to help cover your costs of attending Flock? * If you are an employee of Red Hat, please provide your Red Hat email address and your manager's name and email address. This question is specific to an employer because of the nature of our funding. Almost 100% of Flock is paid for by funding provided by Red Hat. Being able to accurately demonstrate the costs incurred for Red Hat employees at the event may allow us to have a stronger case for increased funding for Flock in future years.
## Geography
Today Flock rotates between NA and EMEA. For now, I think that works, however I believe that we should look to allow Flock to float "around the world." I think that we should give consideration to the distribution of our contributors and the location of likely attendees when thinking about where too hold Flock. I am not ready to suggest we commit to having Flock outside of NA and EMEA, but I believe we should be prepared to think about it when a compelling case is made.
[0]: Having consulted with Fedora Legal recently, it appears that we can legally maintain a list of people who are not allowed to obtain funding in advance. This is going to be explored as I work on the reimbursement and advance purchase policy. However, I suggest we use a similar mechanism here. If a funded ticket contributor no-shows, they are asked to pay for their ticket to the next Flock they attend.
On Mon, Jan 9, 2017 at 6:07 AM, Brian Exelbierd bex@pobox.com wrote:
Warning: This email is long. I don't know how to avoid that. I debated making this a wiki, but I think we need more discussion that just editing. There is no tl;dr. If you want a tl;dr perhaps you should wait a while and participate near the end of the conversation.
Warning: The opening text is the same for both Part I and Part II.
During 2016 I had the privilege of helping to plan and execute Flock and attended both FUDCon LATAM (Puno) and FUDCon APAC (Phnom Penh). Talking to people has led to me to believe that these events may not be meeting all of our goals. Specifically we are spending a lot of time and money on them and may not be getting our full value. I also heard a lot of comments about how the events are not equal from people who thought they should be and not well distributed across the world from people who thought they should be. This led me to believe that there is a lot of confusion about why we do these events and what we want out of them.
Since it is easier to edit than to create, I am going to propose some ideas. My goal is less to present this as a polished proposal ready for a vote and more to allow us to have a discussion around the finer points of the events strategy. It would be nice to see this discussion come to an end by the end of March so that it can have impact this year. The planning for Flock will begin soon (see my another of my emails today) but the FUDCon processes are not heavily started, as far as I can tell.
Additionally, while history is important, I think it is equally important that we consider what we want to accomplish today and in the next few years, not just what we tried to accomplish in the past. Therefore I've written this without too much reference to what is being changed and instead as an idea of what we should be doing. I look forward to folks bringing forward suggestions for continuing activities from the past or better incorporating lessons learned that I may have missed.
I look forward to your feedback and input.
regards,
bex
# Flock
Flock is described by most people to me as the "Fedora Contributor Conference." Therefore, I'd like to see us put together a structure to continue to make that statement more and more accurate. If we are going to have a contributor conference, I think we need to understand why having one is important. I have been told that we need Flock for these reason (I am sure I am missing some):
## Goals
- Increased Contributor Bonding - Contributors should meet each other in
person and strengthen their relationships. We are a far-flung remote community and at times we forget about the person behind the FAS ID. Fedora works best when we work together.
- Increased Project Cohesion - The Fedora Project is a huge complex set
of moving pieces and fantastic people. At times it can be hard to know or remember what is going on and what we are working on. Flock should provide a touchstone to keep all parts of the project interconnected.
- Presentation and Discussion of Large Ideas - Some ideas just aren't
well served by a wiki page and an email thread. When we make major changes (think rings or editions) we need to talk them over. We need presentations and forums for face to face discussions.
- Work - Yes, this is what FADs are for, but we can save money and time
if we schedule work sessions in a place where we are already going to have the right people present (see more later). Flock has been described by several people as needing to be more of a "do conference" instead of a "talk conference." I agree that if we are having a *contributor* conference we should focus on *contribution.*
- Cross-pollination - Having contributors from all over the project in
one place creates the opportunity for a fantastic hallway track (informal, unplanned conversations and working groups). Problems being solved in one area may be the answer for problems being discovered in another. We may find out that we have multiple groups working on the same problem in different ways and that working together may help (or conversely allowing them to have a compare/contrast session may help).
## Programming
Moving Flock more toward a "do" conference means that we should change the way we develop the program. Specifically, I believe that we should ask people why their talk and workshop proposals should be included in greater detail.
Can you describe what greater detail means? We already have people submit abstracts, and those tend to be fairly detailed.
### Theme
I believe the council should, with community input, set some themes for each Flock. These themes are not absolutes, but instead should be one of the many factors considered when looking at programming submissions. This way we can also help keep Flock focused on doing.
We did this last year. It didn't really pan out well. Whether that's because of the themes that were set or something else, I have no idea.
### Talks
Talks will always be part of Flock, however, we can ask a few more questions to help the committee choose them.
- How is this talk focused on contributors? Why should contributors
attend it? Which contributors should attend? How will this talk foster greater contribution to Fedora?
I like these questions. We used a similar set of guidance on the paper committee.
- If this talk is about a specific piece of software or technology, why
is presenting it at Flock better than presenting it as a Fedora-inspired talk at another conference? 3. What actions will you be taking as a result of the feedback you receive on this talk? What actions are you looking for your audience to take?
That implies they get feedback... other than in-room/after-talk feedback from attendees, we don't have anything in place to help them there. Adding that might be helpful, but it isn't simple.
### Workshops/HackFests/etc.
We need more focused work and planning sessions. However, for them to
I'm not really sure I agree with that. The workshops I've seen have been very focused and a lot of work is actually getting done at them. The Fedora Infra team is particularly good at this.
be successful, we need to make sure they are planned for success from the beginning. Therefore, I believe we should ask questions like this:
- What specific goals do you have for this session. What is your
specific agenda? What problem(s) are you trying to solve?
Normally these are already included in the workshop proposal.
- Who specifically needs to be present in order for the goals of this
session to be met? 3. What activities will be done prior to Flock to ensure success and that all attendees are ready for this activity?
Those two can be added.
## Funded Attendance and Costs
I was told by several people that they felt like most non-EMEA and non-NA contributors were not encouraged to attend Flock. Several people related stories about how they had been told that because their region had a FUDCon they should attend that instead. This sentiment was usually relayed to me during a conversation about funded attendance. I want to address this through our structure.
This is accurate. Because LATAM and APAC have FUDCons and NA/EMEA do not, we have prioritized contributors from NA/EMEA for funding. HOWEVER, we have always funded travel for people outside of those regions at every Flock. Priority does not mean exclusion.
I believe that Flock should be explicitly open to anyone and built for Fedora Contributors. If someone is not a Fedora Contributor they should recognize they may not get a lot out of attending Flock. That is OK. We will have other opportunities for them.
The flip side of this is that we had a significant number of registered attendees for Flock 2016 who did not attend. This cost money in terms of wasted catering and prepaid expenses. I am told that this year was exceptionally heavy in terms of no-shows, but that we routinely have a significant number of no-shows and unregistered attendees. We need to find a way to ensure that when we budget for someone's attendance that they really come.
Agreed.
I think that we should consider funded attendance from several angles:
### Tickets
Flock has expenses that are not necessarily part of the "funding" of a funded attendance. This could be meeting room costs or the costs or a group lunch or evening activity. Some of these costs are fixed for the event (e.g. Meeting room rental) and some are per attendee (e.g. Evening activities). Therefore I think we should set a ticket price equal to the cost of all per attendee costs. This means that a ticket will cover the cost of these items, and not make a profit.
However, not everyone should have to pay for their ticket. I believe we should adopt a strategy similar to OpenStack. OpenStack provides free admissions for all active contributors. We should define contributor activity and provide a similar benefit. Defining an active contributor is hard, but we can probably start with something like "generated X fedmsg events in the last year" or "acknowledged as a contributor by a subproject." I think it needs to be more than "cla+1" but flexible enough to account for work that may not be commit oriented.
If only active contributors attend Flock then no tickets will actually be sold. This is OK. However, non-contributors who attend will pay the costs of their attendance. This may help those folks understand that there are better Fedora events for them to attend. This should also reduce the issue with no-show non-contributors. It won't help with no-show contributors[0]. I also believe it is reasonable to have a refund policy in place for those with a documented reason for not showing up (illness, etc.). I think we can solve this by adopting a policy like many other events of offering refund schedules, etc. This should not be a heavy process and it should actually not be a huge burden.
We can do this but I'm not sure it will make a material difference. It also discourages walk-ins, which we tend to to actually be between 40 and 80 people.
### Funded Travel
We cannot afford to cover all of the costs of all of our contributors for Flock. There is currently no budget probability of this changing. Therefore we need to figure out a way of choosing who gets funding and how much more deliberately. I believe we should do this by creating a more complete funding application.
We can assign points or use some other method to rank applications. I think that points of consideration should include:
- Is this person an active contributor? (see above)
- Is this person on "people needing to be in the room" list (see above)?
- Is this person a contributor in the general areas of focus of Flock
(we will know this once the program is set)?
- How will the Fedora project benefit through your attendance at Flock?
- How will you benefit (specifically) from your attendance at Flock?
These have always been taken into account when deciding who gets funding. There is nothing new here.
As far as funding levels, I believe our default funding for active contributors should be the cost of the ticket mentioned above and 0% travel. After that travel funding can range from partial to full.
That's a change. The default before has been hotel+flight if someone is funded.
I believe we also need to strongly encourage attendees to seek outside funding. I believe we can do this by explicitly asking some questions about employment. Note: Employment is not a factor in funding consideration for anyone. All community members are equal regardless of employment or lack thereof.
- How does your work in Fedora relate to your work, if you have a
$dayjob?
- Have you spoken with your employer and specifically asked for some
funding to help cover your costs of attending Flock?
These are fine to ask but in practice they haven't resulted in any additional funding outside of a very small few. I think we need to keep in mind that Fedora is often a "free-time" activity for most contributors.
- If you are an employee of Red Hat, please provide your Red Hat email
address and your manager's name and email address. This question is specific to an employer because of the nature of our funding. Almost 100% of Flock is paid for by funding provided by Red Hat. Being able to accurately demonstrate the costs incurred for Red Hat employees at the event may allow us to have a stronger case for increased funding for Flock in future years.
## Geography
Today Flock rotates between NA and EMEA. For now, I think that works, however I believe that we should look to allow Flock to float "around the world." I think that we should give consideration to the distribution of our contributors and the location of likely attendees when thinking about where too hold Flock. I am not ready to suggest we commit to having Flock outside of NA and EMEA, but I believe we should be prepared to think about it when a compelling case is made.
I am not opposed to the idea at all, but that means we really need to rethink the split between Flock and FUDCon.
[0]: Having consulted with Fedora Legal recently, it appears that we can legally maintain a list of people who are not allowed to obtain funding in advance. This is going to be explored as I work on the reimbursement and advance purchase policy. However, I suggest we use a similar mechanism here. If a funded ticket contributor no-shows, they are asked to pay for their ticket to the next Flock they attend. _______________________________________________ council-discuss mailing list -- council-discuss@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to council-discuss-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org
On Mon, Jan 9, 2017, at 01:53 PM, Josh Boyer wrote:
On Mon, Jan 9, 2017 at 6:07 AM, Brian Exelbierd bex@pobox.com wrote:
Warning: This email is long. I don't know how to avoid that. I debated making this a wiki, but I think we need more discussion that just editing. There is no tl;dr. If you want a tl;dr perhaps you should wait a while and participate near the end of the conversation.
Warning: The opening text is the same for both Part I and Part II.
During 2016 I had the privilege of helping to plan and execute Flock and attended both FUDCon LATAM (Puno) and FUDCon APAC (Phnom Penh). Talking to people has led to me to believe that these events may not be meeting all of our goals. Specifically we are spending a lot of time and money on them and may not be getting our full value. I also heard a lot of comments about how the events are not equal from people who thought they should be and not well distributed across the world from people who thought they should be. This led me to believe that there is a lot of confusion about why we do these events and what we want out of them.
Since it is easier to edit than to create, I am going to propose some ideas. My goal is less to present this as a polished proposal ready for a vote and more to allow us to have a discussion around the finer points of the events strategy. It would be nice to see this discussion come to an end by the end of March so that it can have impact this year. The planning for Flock will begin soon (see my another of my emails today) but the FUDCon processes are not heavily started, as far as I can tell.
Additionally, while history is important, I think it is equally important that we consider what we want to accomplish today and in the next few years, not just what we tried to accomplish in the past. Therefore I've written this without too much reference to what is being changed and instead as an idea of what we should be doing. I look forward to folks bringing forward suggestions for continuing activities from the past or better incorporating lessons learned that I may have missed.
I look forward to your feedback and input.
regards,
bex
# Flock
Flock is described by most people to me as the "Fedora Contributor Conference." Therefore, I'd like to see us put together a structure to continue to make that statement more and more accurate. If we are going to have a contributor conference, I think we need to understand why having one is important. I have been told that we need Flock for these reason (I am sure I am missing some):
## Goals
- Increased Contributor Bonding - Contributors should meet each other in
person and strengthen their relationships. We are a far-flung remote community and at times we forget about the person behind the FAS ID. Fedora works best when we work together.
- Increased Project Cohesion - The Fedora Project is a huge complex set
of moving pieces and fantastic people. At times it can be hard to know or remember what is going on and what we are working on. Flock should provide a touchstone to keep all parts of the project interconnected.
- Presentation and Discussion of Large Ideas - Some ideas just aren't
well served by a wiki page and an email thread. When we make major changes (think rings or editions) we need to talk them over. We need presentations and forums for face to face discussions.
- Work - Yes, this is what FADs are for, but we can save money and time
if we schedule work sessions in a place where we are already going to have the right people present (see more later). Flock has been described by several people as needing to be more of a "do conference" instead of a "talk conference." I agree that if we are having a *contributor* conference we should focus on *contribution.*
- Cross-pollination - Having contributors from all over the project in
one place creates the opportunity for a fantastic hallway track (informal, unplanned conversations and working groups). Problems being solved in one area may be the answer for problems being discovered in another. We may find out that we have multiple groups working on the same problem in different ways and that working together may help (or conversely allowing them to have a compare/contrast session may help).
## Programming
Moving Flock more toward a "do" conference means that we should change the way we develop the program. Specifically, I believe that we should ask people why their talk and workshop proposals should be included in greater detail.
Can you describe what greater detail means? We already have people submit abstracts, and those tend to be fairly detailed.
I was not on the programming committee last year so this may already be covered. I included it as a point that I think we need to ensure we have in the future. I did attend a few talks that didn't seem to have a reason to be at Flock last year. I also got similar feedback from others, so I wanted to emphasize this point.
### Theme
I believe the council should, with community input, set some themes for each Flock. These themes are not absolutes, but instead should be one of the many factors considered when looking at programming submissions. This way we can also help keep Flock focused on doing.
We did this last year. It didn't really pan out well. Whether that's because of the themes that were set or something else, I have no idea.
I think that our themes here need to be the strategic goals of the project. If we decide we want to be the first green Linux Distribution (whatever that means) then a theme for Flock might be "how to become a green distribution." This way we know what we are trying to focus on in addition to other priorities.
What were the themes last year?
### Talks
Talks will always be part of Flock, however, we can ask a few more questions to help the committee choose them.
- How is this talk focused on contributors? Why should contributors
attend it? Which contributors should attend? How will this talk foster greater contribution to Fedora?
I like these questions. We used a similar set of guidance on the paper committee.
- If this talk is about a specific piece of software or technology, why
is presenting it at Flock better than presenting it as a Fedora-inspired talk at another conference? 3. What actions will you be taking as a result of the feedback you receive on this talk? What actions are you looking for your audience to take?
That implies they get feedback... other than in-room/after-talk feedback from attendees, we don't have anything in place to help them there. Adding that might be helpful, but it isn't simple.
I would like to see evidence that the presenter is thinking about how this talk will influence the future. In some cases the talk is just to convey information. In others it is more. I'd like to see the speakers think about this.
### Workshops/HackFests/etc.
We need more focused work and planning sessions. However, for them to
I'm not really sure I agree with that. The workshops I've seen have been very focused and a lot of work is actually getting done at them. The Fedora Infra team is particularly good at this.
I don't understand. You want our workshops to be less focused?
be successful, we need to make sure they are planned for success from the beginning. Therefore, I believe we should ask questions like this:
- What specific goals do you have for this session. What is your
specific agenda? What problem(s) are you trying to solve?
Normally these are already included in the workshop proposal.
- Who specifically needs to be present in order for the goals of this
session to be met? 3. What activities will be done prior to Flock to ensure success and that all attendees are ready for this activity?
Those two can be added.
## Funded Attendance and Costs
I was told by several people that they felt like most non-EMEA and non-NA contributors were not encouraged to attend Flock. Several people related stories about how they had been told that because their region had a FUDCon they should attend that instead. This sentiment was usually relayed to me during a conversation about funded attendance. I want to address this through our structure.
This is accurate. Because LATAM and APAC have FUDCons and NA/EMEA do not, we have prioritized contributors from NA/EMEA for funding. HOWEVER, we have always funded travel for people outside of those regions at every Flock. Priority does not mean exclusion.
Having done some of the work, I know what you say is true. I also know that non-EMEA/NA folks have pointedly said that they felt like priority was exclusion in a lot of cases. This is a communication issue we can fix. However, I don't think we should be equating FUDCons and Flock unless we plan to actually make them equal.
I believe that Flock should be explicitly open to anyone and built for Fedora Contributors. If someone is not a Fedora Contributor they should recognize they may not get a lot out of attending Flock. That is OK. We will have other opportunities for them.
The flip side of this is that we had a significant number of registered attendees for Flock 2016 who did not attend. This cost money in terms of wasted catering and prepaid expenses. I am told that this year was exceptionally heavy in terms of no-shows, but that we routinely have a significant number of no-shows and unregistered attendees. We need to find a way to ensure that when we budget for someone's attendance that they really come.
Agreed.
I think that we should consider funded attendance from several angles:
### Tickets
Flock has expenses that are not necessarily part of the "funding" of a funded attendance. This could be meeting room costs or the costs or a group lunch or evening activity. Some of these costs are fixed for the event (e.g. Meeting room rental) and some are per attendee (e.g. Evening activities). Therefore I think we should set a ticket price equal to the cost of all per attendee costs. This means that a ticket will cover the cost of these items, and not make a profit.
However, not everyone should have to pay for their ticket. I believe we should adopt a strategy similar to OpenStack. OpenStack provides free admissions for all active contributors. We should define contributor activity and provide a similar benefit. Defining an active contributor is hard, but we can probably start with something like "generated X fedmsg events in the last year" or "acknowledged as a contributor by a subproject." I think it needs to be more than "cla+1" but flexible enough to account for work that may not be commit oriented.
If only active contributors attend Flock then no tickets will actually be sold. This is OK. However, non-contributors who attend will pay the costs of their attendance. This may help those folks understand that there are better Fedora events for them to attend. This should also reduce the issue with no-show non-contributors. It won't help with no-show contributors[0]. I also believe it is reasonable to have a refund policy in place for those with a documented reason for not showing up (illness, etc.). I think we can solve this by adopting a policy like many other events of offering refund schedules, etc. This should not be a heavy process and it should actually not be a huge burden.
We can do this but I'm not sure it will make a material difference. It also discourages walk-ins, which we tend to to actually be between 40 and 80 people.
there is nothing that prevents us from doing ticket funding at the door for active contributors who are walk-ins.
### Funded Travel
We cannot afford to cover all of the costs of all of our contributors for Flock. There is currently no budget probability of this changing. Therefore we need to figure out a way of choosing who gets funding and how much more deliberately. I believe we should do this by creating a more complete funding application.
We can assign points or use some other method to rank applications. I think that points of consideration should include:
- Is this person an active contributor? (see above)
- Is this person on "people needing to be in the room" list (see above)?
- Is this person a contributor in the general areas of focus of Flock
(we will know this once the program is set)?
- How will the Fedora project benefit through your attendance at Flock?
- How will you benefit (specifically) from your attendance at Flock?
These have always been taken into account when deciding who gets funding. There is nothing new here.
As far as funding levels, I believe our default funding for active contributors should be the cost of the ticket mentioned above and 0% travel. After that travel funding can range from partial to full.
That's a change. The default before has been hotel+flight if someone is funded.
I believe we also need to strongly encourage attendees to seek outside funding. I believe we can do this by explicitly asking some questions about employment. Note: Employment is not a factor in funding consideration for anyone. All community members are equal regardless of employment or lack thereof.
- How does your work in Fedora relate to your work, if you have a
$dayjob?
- Have you spoken with your employer and specifically asked for some
funding to help cover your costs of attending Flock?
These are fine to ask but in practice they haven't resulted in any additional funding outside of a very small few. I think we need to keep in mind that Fedora is often a "free-time" activity for most contributors.
- If you are an employee of Red Hat, please provide your Red Hat email
address and your manager's name and email address. This question is specific to an employer because of the nature of our funding. Almost 100% of Flock is paid for by funding provided by Red Hat. Being able to accurately demonstrate the costs incurred for Red Hat employees at the event may allow us to have a stronger case for increased funding for Flock in future years.
## Geography
Today Flock rotates between NA and EMEA. For now, I think that works, however I believe that we should look to allow Flock to float "around the world." I think that we should give consideration to the distribution of our contributors and the location of likely attendees when thinking about where too hold Flock. I am not ready to suggest we commit to having Flock outside of NA and EMEA, but I believe we should be prepared to think about it when a compelling case is made.
I am not opposed to the idea at all, but that means we really need to rethink the split between Flock and FUDCon.
[0]: Having consulted with Fedora Legal recently, it appears that we can legally maintain a list of people who are not allowed to obtain funding in advance. This is going to be explored as I work on the reimbursement and advance purchase policy. However, I suggest we use a similar mechanism here. If a funded ticket contributor no-shows, they are asked to pay for their ticket to the next Flock they attend.
On Mon, Jan 09, 2017 at 07:53:35AM -0500, Josh Boyer wrote:
I believe the council should, with community input, set some themes for each Flock. These themes are not absolutes, but instead should be one of the many factors considered when looking at programming submissions. This way we can also help keep Flock focused on doing.
We did this last year. It didn't really pan out well. Whether that's because of the themes that were set or something else, I have no idea.
For whatever reason, we basically got those themes by accident. I suggested some examples that fit the style of theme that I wanted (thinking about impact on the project or the community, rather than technology-centric tracks), and no one else had any other ones, so that's what we got. (I mean, I don't think my suggestions were bad per se, but we probably good have done better with more input.)
Also, FWIW, we (organizers) suggested "genres" for submissions to Flock from the first event, to help encourage talks that we thought would be valuable to the community. Having an overarching theme would be interesting, but I'd want it to be something that Flock inherited from a community focus, not an event only thing.
On Jan 9, 2017 9:03 AM, "Matthew Miller" mattdm@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Mon, Jan 09, 2017 at 07:53:35AM -0500, Josh Boyer wrote:
I believe the council should, with community input, set some themes for each Flock. These themes are not absolutes, but instead should be one of the many factors considered when looking at programming submissions. This way we can also help keep Flock focused on doing.
We did this last year. It didn't really pan out well. Whether that's because of the themes that were set or something else, I have no idea.
For whatever reason, we basically got those themes by accident. I suggested some examples that fit the style of theme that I wanted (thinking about impact on the project or the community, rather than technology-centric tracks), and no one else had any other ones, so that's what we got. (I mean, I don't think my suggestions were bad per se, but we probably good have done better with more input.)
-- Matthew Miller mattdm@fedoraproject.org Fedora Project Leader _______________________________________________ council-discuss mailing list -- council-discuss@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to council-discuss-leave@lists. fedoraproject.org
On Mon, Jan 9, 2017, at 03:08 PM, Tom Callaway wrote:
Also, FWIW, we (organizers) suggested "genres" for submissions to Flock from the first event, to help encourage talks that we thought would be valuable to the community. Having an overarching theme would be interesting, but I'd want it to be something that Flock inherited from a community focus, not an event only thing.
I think a key element of this is going to be driving the idea that these themes are not specific to Flock. (not to restate you only). That is something hte council and others can do with additional communication, blog posts, etc.
regards,
bex
On Jan 9, 2017 9:03 AM, "Matthew Miller" mattdm@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Mon, Jan 09, 2017 at 07:53:35AM -0500, Josh Boyer wrote:
I believe the council should, with community input, set some themes for each Flock. These themes are not absolutes, but instead should be one of the many factors considered when looking at programming submissions. This way we can also help keep Flock focused on doing.
We did this last year. It didn't really pan out well. Whether that's because of the themes that were set or something else, I have no idea.
For whatever reason, we basically got those themes by accident. I
suggested some examples that fit the style of theme that I wanted
(thinking about impact on the project or the community, rather than technology-centric tracks), and no one else had any other ones, so
that's what we got. (I mean, I don't think my suggestions were bad per se, but we probably good have done better with more input.)
--
Matthew Miller
Fedora Project Leader
council-discuss mailing list -- council- discuss@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to council-discuss- leave@lists.fedoraproject.org
council-discuss mailing list -- council- discuss@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to council-discuss- leave@lists.fedoraproject.org
On Mon, Jan 9, 2017 at 8:56 AM, Brian Exelbierd bex@pobox.com wrote:
On Mon, Jan 9, 2017, at 01:53 PM, Josh Boyer wrote:
On Mon, Jan 9, 2017 at 6:07 AM, Brian Exelbierd bex@pobox.com wrote:
Warning: This email is long. I don't know how to avoid that. I debated making this a wiki, but I think we need more discussion that just editing. There is no tl;dr. If you want a tl;dr perhaps you should wait a while and participate near the end of the conversation.
Warning: The opening text is the same for both Part I and Part II.
During 2016 I had the privilege of helping to plan and execute Flock and attended both FUDCon LATAM (Puno) and FUDCon APAC (Phnom Penh). Talking to people has led to me to believe that these events may not be meeting all of our goals. Specifically we are spending a lot of time and money on them and may not be getting our full value. I also heard a lot of comments about how the events are not equal from people who thought they should be and not well distributed across the world from people who thought they should be. This led me to believe that there is a lot of confusion about why we do these events and what we want out of them.
Since it is easier to edit than to create, I am going to propose some ideas. My goal is less to present this as a polished proposal ready for a vote and more to allow us to have a discussion around the finer points of the events strategy. It would be nice to see this discussion come to an end by the end of March so that it can have impact this year. The planning for Flock will begin soon (see my another of my emails today) but the FUDCon processes are not heavily started, as far as I can tell.
Additionally, while history is important, I think it is equally important that we consider what we want to accomplish today and in the next few years, not just what we tried to accomplish in the past. Therefore I've written this without too much reference to what is being changed and instead as an idea of what we should be doing. I look forward to folks bringing forward suggestions for continuing activities from the past or better incorporating lessons learned that I may have missed.
I look forward to your feedback and input.
regards,
bex
# Flock
Flock is described by most people to me as the "Fedora Contributor Conference." Therefore, I'd like to see us put together a structure to continue to make that statement more and more accurate. If we are going to have a contributor conference, I think we need to understand why having one is important. I have been told that we need Flock for these reason (I am sure I am missing some):
## Goals
- Increased Contributor Bonding - Contributors should meet each other in
person and strengthen their relationships. We are a far-flung remote community and at times we forget about the person behind the FAS ID. Fedora works best when we work together.
- Increased Project Cohesion - The Fedora Project is a huge complex set
of moving pieces and fantastic people. At times it can be hard to know or remember what is going on and what we are working on. Flock should provide a touchstone to keep all parts of the project interconnected.
- Presentation and Discussion of Large Ideas - Some ideas just aren't
well served by a wiki page and an email thread. When we make major changes (think rings or editions) we need to talk them over. We need presentations and forums for face to face discussions.
- Work - Yes, this is what FADs are for, but we can save money and time
if we schedule work sessions in a place where we are already going to have the right people present (see more later). Flock has been described by several people as needing to be more of a "do conference" instead of a "talk conference." I agree that if we are having a *contributor* conference we should focus on *contribution.*
- Cross-pollination - Having contributors from all over the project in
one place creates the opportunity for a fantastic hallway track (informal, unplanned conversations and working groups). Problems being solved in one area may be the answer for problems being discovered in another. We may find out that we have multiple groups working on the same problem in different ways and that working together may help (or conversely allowing them to have a compare/contrast session may help).
## Programming
Moving Flock more toward a "do" conference means that we should change the way we develop the program. Specifically, I believe that we should ask people why their talk and workshop proposals should be included in greater detail.
Can you describe what greater detail means? We already have people submit abstracts, and those tend to be fairly detailed.
I was not on the programming committee last year so this may already be covered. I included it as a point that I think we need to ensure we have in the future. I did attend a few talks that didn't seem to have a reason to be at Flock last year. I also got similar feedback from others, so I wanted to emphasize this point.
I would be curious to know which talks those were.
### Theme
I believe the council should, with community input, set some themes for each Flock. These themes are not absolutes, but instead should be one of the many factors considered when looking at programming submissions. This way we can also help keep Flock focused on doing.
We did this last year. It didn't really pan out well. Whether that's because of the themes that were set or something else, I have no idea.
I think that our themes here need to be the strategic goals of the project. If we decide we want to be the first green Linux Distribution (whatever that means) then a theme for Flock might be "how to become a green distribution." This way we know what we are trying to focus on in addition to other priorities.
What were the themes last year?
Strategic goals of the project based on the existing Council Objectives.
Like I said, it didn't pan out well. That's not saying it's wrong, but that in practice people want to talk about what they're working on. That doesn't always fit with strategic longer term goals that come from "top down".
### Talks
Talks will always be part of Flock, however, we can ask a few more questions to help the committee choose them.
- If this talk is about a specific piece of software or technology, why
is presenting it at Flock better than presenting it as a Fedora-inspired talk at another conference? 3. What actions will you be taking as a result of the feedback you receive on this talk? What actions are you looking for your audience to take?
That implies they get feedback... other than in-room/after-talk feedback from attendees, we don't have anything in place to help them there. Adding that might be helpful, but it isn't simple.
I would like to see evidence that the presenter is thinking about how this talk will influence the future. In some cases the talk is just to convey information. In others it is more. I'd like to see the speakers think about this.
OK, that's fine. I interpreted feedback as an after-the-talk input.
### Workshops/HackFests/etc.
We need more focused work and planning sessions. However, for them to
I'm not really sure I agree with that. The workshops I've seen have been very focused and a lot of work is actually getting done at them. The Fedora Infra team is particularly good at this.
I don't understand. You want our workshops to be less focused?
No, I was saying I disagreed with your insinuation that they weren't already focused.
## Funded Attendance and Costs
I was told by several people that they felt like most non-EMEA and non-NA contributors were not encouraged to attend Flock. Several people related stories about how they had been told that because their region had a FUDCon they should attend that instead. This sentiment was usually relayed to me during a conversation about funded attendance. I want to address this through our structure.
This is accurate. Because LATAM and APAC have FUDCons and NA/EMEA do not, we have prioritized contributors from NA/EMEA for funding. HOWEVER, we have always funded travel for people outside of those regions at every Flock. Priority does not mean exclusion.
Having done some of the work, I know what you say is true. I also know that non-EMEA/NA folks have pointedly said that they felt like priority was exclusion in a lot of cases. This is a communication issue we can fix. However, I don't think we should be equating FUDCons and Flock unless we plan to actually make them equal.
We aren't equating Flock and FUDCons. That's why we bring in contributors from non-EMEA/NA regions to Flock whenever we can. However, the existence of FUDCons in those regions while they are not a thing in NA/EMEA means there IS disparity in conference options between the regions.
### Tickets
Flock has expenses that are not necessarily part of the "funding" of a funded attendance. This could be meeting room costs or the costs or a group lunch or evening activity. Some of these costs are fixed for the event (e.g. Meeting room rental) and some are per attendee (e.g. Evening activities). Therefore I think we should set a ticket price equal to the cost of all per attendee costs. This means that a ticket will cover the cost of these items, and not make a profit.
However, not everyone should have to pay for their ticket. I believe we should adopt a strategy similar to OpenStack. OpenStack provides free admissions for all active contributors. We should define contributor activity and provide a similar benefit. Defining an active contributor is hard, but we can probably start with something like "generated X fedmsg events in the last year" or "acknowledged as a contributor by a subproject." I think it needs to be more than "cla+1" but flexible enough to account for work that may not be commit oriented.
If only active contributors attend Flock then no tickets will actually be sold. This is OK. However, non-contributors who attend will pay the costs of their attendance. This may help those folks understand that there are better Fedora events for them to attend. This should also reduce the issue with no-show non-contributors. It won't help with no-show contributors[0]. I also believe it is reasonable to have a refund policy in place for those with a documented reason for not showing up (illness, etc.). I think we can solve this by adopting a policy like many other events of offering refund schedules, etc. This should not be a heavy process and it should actually not be a huge burden.
We can do this but I'm not sure it will make a material difference. It also discourages walk-ins, which we tend to to actually be between 40 and 80 people.
there is nothing that prevents us from doing ticket funding at the door for active contributors who are walk-ins.
Walk-ins are very very rarely existing contributors. The purpose of walk-ins isn't to bring in late-show contributors. It's the one non-contributor focused aspect of Flock, in that we encourage people to come because we already have the space, etc. It's the one growth aspect of Flock, which may or may not lead to the NEXT set of contributors.
I'd suggest we leave walk-ins as "attend the sessions, but you don't get food or events".
josh
On Mon, Jan 9, 2017 at 9:03 AM, Matthew Miller mattdm@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Mon, Jan 09, 2017 at 07:53:35AM -0500, Josh Boyer wrote:
I believe the council should, with community input, set some themes for each Flock. These themes are not absolutes, but instead should be one of the many factors considered when looking at programming submissions. This way we can also help keep Flock focused on doing.
We did this last year. It didn't really pan out well. Whether that's because of the themes that were set or something else, I have no idea.
For whatever reason, we basically got those themes by accident. I
No we didn't. Come on, that's trying to hand-wave away the lack of buy-in we got on the themes.
suggested some examples that fit the style of theme that I wanted (thinking about impact on the project or the community, rather than technology-centric tracks), and no one else had any other ones, so that's what we got. (I mean, I don't think my suggestions were bad per se, but we probably good have done better with more input.)
They weren't bad. They were tied to existing Objectives. People just didn't go with it. We did exactly what Brian is proposing and it failed. We need to figure out why, not just do it again and hope it works better.
josh
On Mon, Jan 9, 2017, at 03:28 PM, Josh Boyer wrote:
On Mon, Jan 9, 2017 at 8:56 AM, Brian Exelbierd bex@pobox.com wrote:
On Mon, Jan 9, 2017, at 01:53 PM, Josh Boyer wrote:
On Mon, Jan 9, 2017 at 6:07 AM, Brian Exelbierd bex@pobox.com wrote:
Warning: This email is long. I don't know how to avoid that. I debated making this a wiki, but I think we need more discussion that just editing. There is no tl;dr. If you want a tl;dr perhaps you should wait a while and participate near the end of the conversation.
Warning: The opening text is the same for both Part I and Part II.
During 2016 I had the privilege of helping to plan and execute Flock and attended both FUDCon LATAM (Puno) and FUDCon APAC (Phnom Penh). Talking to people has led to me to believe that these events may not be meeting all of our goals. Specifically we are spending a lot of time and money on them and may not be getting our full value. I also heard a lot of comments about how the events are not equal from people who thought they should be and not well distributed across the world from people who thought they should be. This led me to believe that there is a lot of confusion about why we do these events and what we want out of them.
Since it is easier to edit than to create, I am going to propose some ideas. My goal is less to present this as a polished proposal ready for a vote and more to allow us to have a discussion around the finer points of the events strategy. It would be nice to see this discussion come to an end by the end of March so that it can have impact this year. The planning for Flock will begin soon (see my another of my emails today) but the FUDCon processes are not heavily started, as far as I can tell.
Additionally, while history is important, I think it is equally important that we consider what we want to accomplish today and in the next few years, not just what we tried to accomplish in the past. Therefore I've written this without too much reference to what is being changed and instead as an idea of what we should be doing. I look forward to folks bringing forward suggestions for continuing activities from the past or better incorporating lessons learned that I may have missed.
I look forward to your feedback and input.
regards,
bex
# Flock
Flock is described by most people to me as the "Fedora Contributor Conference." Therefore, I'd like to see us put together a structure to continue to make that statement more and more accurate. If we are going to have a contributor conference, I think we need to understand why having one is important. I have been told that we need Flock for these reason (I am sure I am missing some):
## Goals
- Increased Contributor Bonding - Contributors should meet each other in
person and strengthen their relationships. We are a far-flung remote community and at times we forget about the person behind the FAS ID. Fedora works best when we work together.
- Increased Project Cohesion - The Fedora Project is a huge complex set
of moving pieces and fantastic people. At times it can be hard to know or remember what is going on and what we are working on. Flock should provide a touchstone to keep all parts of the project interconnected.
- Presentation and Discussion of Large Ideas - Some ideas just aren't
well served by a wiki page and an email thread. When we make major changes (think rings or editions) we need to talk them over. We need presentations and forums for face to face discussions.
- Work - Yes, this is what FADs are for, but we can save money and time
if we schedule work sessions in a place where we are already going to have the right people present (see more later). Flock has been described by several people as needing to be more of a "do conference" instead of a "talk conference." I agree that if we are having a *contributor* conference we should focus on *contribution.*
- Cross-pollination - Having contributors from all over the project in
one place creates the opportunity for a fantastic hallway track (informal, unplanned conversations and working groups). Problems being solved in one area may be the answer for problems being discovered in another. We may find out that we have multiple groups working on the same problem in different ways and that working together may help (or conversely allowing them to have a compare/contrast session may help).
## Programming
Moving Flock more toward a "do" conference means that we should change the way we develop the program. Specifically, I believe that we should ask people why their talk and workshop proposals should be included in greater detail.
Can you describe what greater detail means? We already have people submit abstracts, and those tend to be fairly detailed.
I was not on the programming committee last year so this may already be covered. I included it as a point that I think we need to ensure we have in the future. I did attend a few talks that didn't seem to have a reason to be at Flock last year. I also got similar feedback from others, so I wanted to emphasize this point.
I would be curious to know which talks those were.
### Theme
I believe the council should, with community input, set some themes for each Flock. These themes are not absolutes, but instead should be one of the many factors considered when looking at programming submissions. This way we can also help keep Flock focused on doing.
We did this last year. It didn't really pan out well. Whether that's because of the themes that were set or something else, I have no idea.
I think that our themes here need to be the strategic goals of the project. If we decide we want to be the first green Linux Distribution (whatever that means) then a theme for Flock might be "how to become a green distribution." This way we know what we are trying to focus on in addition to other priorities.
What were the themes last year?
Strategic goals of the project based on the existing Council Objectives.
Like I said, it didn't pan out well. That's not saying it's wrong, but that in practice people want to talk about what they're working on. That doesn't always fit with strategic longer term goals that come from "top down".
While the council may choose to set some goals directly, I believe most of the goals should be reflections on the thoughts of our community members. Therefore these shouldn't be a top-down goals in most cases.
I think it is great for people to talk about what they are working on. I would like those talks to be held elsewhere when appropriate so that we can draw in new contributors as well. Some of them are going to be great for Flock, others not so much.
### Talks
Talks will always be part of Flock, however, we can ask a few more questions to help the committee choose them.
- If this talk is about a specific piece of software or technology, why
is presenting it at Flock better than presenting it as a Fedora-inspired talk at another conference? 3. What actions will you be taking as a result of the feedback you receive on this talk? What actions are you looking for your audience to take?
That implies they get feedback... other than in-room/after-talk feedback from attendees, we don't have anything in place to help them there. Adding that might be helpful, but it isn't simple.
I would like to see evidence that the presenter is thinking about how this talk will influence the future. In some cases the talk is just to convey information. In others it is more. I'd like to see the speakers think about this.
OK, that's fine. I interpreted feedback as an after-the-talk input.
### Workshops/HackFests/etc.
We need more focused work and planning sessions. However, for them to
I'm not really sure I agree with that. The workshops I've seen have been very focused and a lot of work is actually getting done at them. The Fedora Infra team is particularly good at this.
I don't understand. You want our workshops to be less focused?
No, I was saying I disagreed with your insinuation that they weren't already focused.
I am sorry I wasn't clearer in the introduction. I deliberately did not set out to suggest changes and instead just described a vision. We may already be doing some of this and I definitely want that to continue. However, I deliberately didn't set out to write a critique of what we are doing, positive or negative.
## Funded Attendance and Costs
I was told by several people that they felt like most non-EMEA and non-NA contributors were not encouraged to attend Flock. Several people related stories about how they had been told that because their region had a FUDCon they should attend that instead. This sentiment was usually relayed to me during a conversation about funded attendance. I want to address this through our structure.
This is accurate. Because LATAM and APAC have FUDCons and NA/EMEA do not, we have prioritized contributors from NA/EMEA for funding. HOWEVER, we have always funded travel for people outside of those regions at every Flock. Priority does not mean exclusion.
Having done some of the work, I know what you say is true. I also know that non-EMEA/NA folks have pointedly said that they felt like priority was exclusion in a lot of cases. This is a communication issue we can fix. However, I don't think we should be equating FUDCons and Flock unless we plan to actually make them equal.
We aren't equating Flock and FUDCons. That's why we bring in contributors from non-EMEA/NA regions to Flock whenever we can. However, the existence of FUDCons in those regions while they are not a thing in NA/EMEA means there IS disparity in conference options between the regions.
I have tried to address FUDCons in the other email. I think that the disparity creates a feeling of second-class citizenship for those who don't have a contributor conference in their region. It also creates the inverse feeling regarding user conferences for NA/EMEA.
### Tickets
Flock has expenses that are not necessarily part of the "funding" of a funded attendance. This could be meeting room costs or the costs or a group lunch or evening activity. Some of these costs are fixed for the event (e.g. Meeting room rental) and some are per attendee (e.g. Evening activities). Therefore I think we should set a ticket price equal to the cost of all per attendee costs. This means that a ticket will cover the cost of these items, and not make a profit.
However, not everyone should have to pay for their ticket. I believe we should adopt a strategy similar to OpenStack. OpenStack provides free admissions for all active contributors. We should define contributor activity and provide a similar benefit. Defining an active contributor is hard, but we can probably start with something like "generated X fedmsg events in the last year" or "acknowledged as a contributor by a subproject." I think it needs to be more than "cla+1" but flexible enough to account for work that may not be commit oriented.
If only active contributors attend Flock then no tickets will actually be sold. This is OK. However, non-contributors who attend will pay the costs of their attendance. This may help those folks understand that there are better Fedora events for them to attend. This should also reduce the issue with no-show non-contributors. It won't help with no-show contributors[0]. I also believe it is reasonable to have a refund policy in place for those with a documented reason for not showing up (illness, etc.). I think we can solve this by adopting a policy like many other events of offering refund schedules, etc. This should not be a heavy process and it should actually not be a huge burden.
We can do this but I'm not sure it will make a material difference. It also discourages walk-ins, which we tend to to actually be between 40 and 80 people.
there is nothing that prevents us from doing ticket funding at the door for active contributors who are walk-ins.
Walk-ins are very very rarely existing contributors. The purpose of walk-ins isn't to bring in late-show contributors. It's the one non-contributor focused aspect of Flock, in that we encourage people to come because we already have the space, etc. It's the one growth aspect of Flock, which may or may not lead to the NEXT set of contributors.
I'd suggest we leave walk-ins as "attend the sessions, but you don't get food or events".
We can do that, however, I believe that our programming should be very heavily contributor focused. That may limit the appear to walk-ins. If we need Flock to serve a different purpose we should program that in from the start.
regards,
bex
On Mon, Jan 09, 2017 at 09:30:38AM -0500, Josh Boyer wrote:
We did this last year. It didn't really pan out well. Whether that's because of the themes that were set or something else, I have no idea.
For whatever reason, we basically got those themes by accident. I
No we didn't. Come on, that's trying to hand-wave away the lack of buy-in we got on the themes.
Oh, no, I mean the same thing you are saying. We didn't get them because people were super-enthusiastic about them, we got them because people were like, "sure, sounds good" — not a lot of buy-in, as you say.
They weren't bad. They were tied to existing Objectives. People just didn't go with it. We did exactly what Brian is proposing and it failed. We need to figure out why, not just do it again and hope it works better.
We've basically had this problem around the Objectives idea in general. I was expecting we'd have more than we could deal with and would have to choose, rather than the current state.
On Mon, Jan 9, 2017 at 10:09 AM, Matthew Miller mattdm@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Mon, Jan 09, 2017 at 09:30:38AM -0500, Josh Boyer wrote:
We did this last year. It didn't really pan out well. Whether that's because of the themes that were set or something else, I have no idea.
For whatever reason, we basically got those themes by accident. I
No we didn't. Come on, that's trying to hand-wave away the lack of buy-in we got on the themes.
Oh, no, I mean the same thing you are saying. We didn't get them because people were super-enthusiastic about them, we got them because people were like, "sure, sounds good" — not a lot of buy-in, as you say.
They weren't bad. They were tied to existing Objectives. People just didn't go with it. We did exactly what Brian is proposing and it failed. We need to figure out why, not just do it again and hope it works better.
We've basically had this problem around the Objectives idea in general. I was expecting we'd have more than we could deal with and would have to choose, rather than the current state.
Agreed. I'd add that for those we do have currently, there hasn't been much in the way of publicity or communication outside the group doing that Objective. We need to get better about that as well. Perhaps if others "see" more of how an Objective goes from a proposal to completion it might encourage more submissions.
josh
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Brian Exelbierd -
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Tom Callaway