[Embajadores-fedora-latam] Re: Fwd: [Ambassadors] Re: Let's equip our Communities in EMEA
On Wed, 2016-11-09 at 23:00 -0200, Athos Ribeiro wrote:
Hello LATAM,
As we discussed during the last meeting, we only used 1/3 of our
budget
so far.
As it was proposed before FUDCon, it would be REALLY nice to produce
a
massive ammount of SWAG in onle place and have it shipped ti all the
other regions. If that is too expensive, we could do the production
in
each country and get it redistributed locally.
The idea is great! There are two problems:
1 - Some ppl said that it would not be nice spending the budget just
because in massive SWAG just because we did not spend it so far.
My opinion:
I strongly disagree here, and am forwarding this message from another
region to show you there's nothing wromg with that. I mean, we need
SWAG, so let's make sure ambassadors have SWAG, right?
2 - Someone said in the past that we could not pay in advance, and
since
this would be too expensive, it would be nice to have the card holder
directly paying for it, what I heard it's not possible.
My opinion:
We could use online companies in each country and get Neville to
process
all the payments and have it shipped to a local ambassador who would
later distribute it among other ambassadors in the country (mail,
events, etc). What is the problem here? I see nothing wrong. We do
have
a CC limit, so we should start doing it ASAP, if we want to do that
for
this FY. But it would be something really nice to do in the end of
each
FY provided we have remaining budget.
Any thoughts? I would love to hear Neville's input here as well.
Thanks guys :)
Thre are other two things that are needed:
Firts, this require some one to be willing to get the burden of taking
all the swag and then makes packages for each ambassador. This person
have to have a paypal account to be reimbursed for all the shipment
expenses.
Second, also it is required that in the other side a person has the
ability to deal with customs and if they are charged with taxes, they
can pay and have a paypal account to be reimbursed.
For instance if somebody send a box with a lot of stickers to me, it
will be retained in customs and I will have to pay taxes for completing
the import.
Having said that, when you add shipping and taxes, plus the complexity
of dealing with customs. We may not have an advantage of centralized
production. Import duties are set to protect local industry and one of
the industries protected in several countries are printing companies.
Taxes and shipping have been the reasons why this has been proposed
several times and it has not being implemented so far.
Not sure if we can separate some areas, where some commercial agreement
may help out. I can send stuff with ease to Guatemala, Honduras and El
Salvador, but not to Costa Rica or Panama. Not sure what countries are
under which treaty and may help. But for sure is not about making one
big production for all LATAM.
Look for which countries you can send stuff that will be under free
trade agreement. If you can produce for 3 or 4 countries, I think is
worth making an investment.
We can produce swag for each country individually that has somebody
with paypal to be reimbursed for the production for his or her country.
It may be not ideal, but we do not live in a perfect world.
From EMEA email, I like the idea of table clothes.
Best regards
Neville