Sponsoring event attendees

[Pierre-Yves Chibon]

On Tue, 2012-02-14 at 07:49 -0700, Robyn Bergeron wrote:
> 
> 
> However, I have some additional input here.  For the Tempe FUDCon, we 
> made the case that we were having additional people from each region 
> come to participate to learn how to run a FUDCon, and to bring that 
> knowledge back to their respective regions.  And to that, I say,
> MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, we now have plenty of people with the knowledge.
> And yet, for Blacksburg, we had numerous people applying from out of
> the country, with requests like, "I'm coming to teach about X," or
> "I'm coming to learn about how to run a FUDCon," "I'm coming to engage
> with other people from the teams I work on," etc., without any very
> specific, concrete deliverables.  I think these requests (and grants)
> need to be cut down drastically, or we should reconsider the idea of
> just having one or two large fudcons a year, bring in as many people
> as we can, and push people to enable smaller one-day events for
> outreach in their regions.

While reading your email I was thinking, what about inverting the
process. Instead of saying: "I want to come because I have never been to
a FUDCon and want to see how nice it is", you would nominate someone
else: "I know XX wants to come but budget might be tight for him and I
think he should have a chance to come. I want to meet in face to face
and work with him on x, y and z".
I realize nominations have pros and cons and can be circumvent (I
request for you, you request for me), but maybe worth considering.

Regards,
Pierre