Sponsoring event attendees

[Igor Pires Soares]

Em Ter, 2012-02-14 às 07:49 -0700, Robyn Bergeron escreveu:
> 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.

I'll give FUDCon Panama as another example here. From what I recall we
held 3 subsidy meetings and we didn't deny a single request. All
requests were approved until we reached the budget limit for travel
subsidies. The only tickets not approved were those ones with missing
information. IMHO this is not alright. In those meetings some people
fell bad to deny requests or to give argumentation why one should not
go. This happens for a number of reasons that vary from the vision of
the event focus to personal identification with someone and even fear to
pick up a fight.

> In EMEA and NA, we have a fairly good handle on what events we 
> traditionally go to.  Less so in APAC and LATAM, though there are 
> certainly events like LCA and FISL where we traditionally send people.  
> What I would love to see is a proactive approach to spending each year - 
> where each region gets a handle on (a) What events they likely expect to 
> attend, (b) How much they expect to spend at each one, including any 
> sponsorship (and I don't believe we should shy away from .org or 
> lower-level sponsorship of some events), (c) Swag planning, (d) Buffer 
> for additional, non-listed events, or thoughts of allocating towards 
> additional events that we haven't attended in the past, (e) Other stuff 
> - shipping, media, etc.

In LATAM getting budget and space for Fedora in events such FISL has
been difficult. First because the booth is way too expensive and does
not fit well in a FAD budget or general event budget. Some years ago we
relied in local Red Hat office support to handle this, but it's not
every year they offer this support. Last year they didn't and we ended
with a very limited space. Other problem was that budget liberation was
very slow and the airfares were bought a couple weeks before the event,
what frequently led to more expensive tickets. Fortunately this was
solved by the community credit cards and for Latinoware we already had a
smoother process.

In addition, handling subsidy requests for events such FISL has always
been a struggle. Since budget is tight and a lot of people want to
attend, some requests are declined. Before last year, regional
leadership used to choose who were the people to be subsidized, and
people who did not get the subsidies always got mad even if the criteria
was clear. Last year FAmSCo approved the subsidies and a couple folks
got mad anyway, what takes us back to my previous point: people fear
declining requests, specially community-only members. A good process
will reduce the amount of complaining about denied requests but will not
erase it. People who are entitled to make the decision need to keep in
mind that someone might take it personally, or might fell frustrated and
start to throw rocks. As our project grows regionally and globally we
will need to start declining more requests and we need to be prepared to
deal with consequences.

> And I don't know what the shape of Famsco reporting is right now; 
> perhaps we need to get back to a focus on it, and if famsco isn't 
> willing to do it, get a group together who is willing to put in the 
> effort.  But that's been a major piece of the accountability, and 
> additionally, an important piece that Max, or Harish, or the FPL can 
> show to Red Hat and say, "Here's the list of where your money went, and 
> how it was used, and why continuing to invest here is important."

The regional budget breakdown was removed from last FAmSCo report
because it was outdated. The total sum didn't match the regional values.
I know that Harish is working on updating it and when things are back
into shape it will be included again because this is really important
indeed and FAmSCo realize that.

Regards,
-- 
Igor Pires Soares
Fedora Ambassador (Brazil) - Member of FAmSCo
Fedora I18N/L10N QA
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Igor