Sponsoring event attendees

[Igor Pires Soares]

Em Seg, 2012-02-20 às 12:26 -0600, inode0 escreveu:
> On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 11:49 AM, Igor Pires Soares
> Let me be more clear. I know we always have deadlines. But what I
> really want is for *everyone* who meets those deadlines to be treated
> as if they all did that at the same moment so the order of requests is
> no longer a factor at all.

I get it and totally agree with it. A request placed before doesn't mean
that it's more valuable than others in any way. But in addition to that
we need to make sure that those deadlines will be firmly respected.

> > The idea of ranking the requests sounds perfectly reasonable but we need
> > to be very clear about who is eligible to make this rank. In the case of
> > FUDCons I think that FAmSCo, local organizers and the FPL should be
> > directly involved. But for regional major events such FISL or FOSDEM I
> > don't think that is feasible to involve all of them in all events. In
> > such cases I'd rather involve a regional mentor and a FAmSCo member who
> > might be willing to help in this particular event. Together they could
> > go through all the requests as you said and present the final result in
> > a wiki page, for instance.
> 
> Let me also be more clear about this. The goal of this ranking is
> really only to focus attention on what would normally be easy, high
> value, requests earlier in the process. And to stop penalizing someone
> who tries to find other funding until the last minute when they add
> their request to the end of the current queue. It isn't meant to be at
> all binding on those making the approvals.

I agree that the ranking will help to focus on more appropriated aspects
instead of the order the requests were filled. That is totally
reasonable. My point is that some criteria should be adopted to define
who will be entitled to compose the ranking, since it will be highly
subjective. We need to make sure it will be composed in a transparent
and legitimate way.

> The local organizers and the Fedora Project itself will have goals for
> any event like FUDCon and making sure those goals can be achieved will
> often involve travel subsidies being used to support those who will
> help achieve those goals. So I can imagine a process where once the
> deadline is met the group making funding decisions might begin with
> consideration of some candidates who fit into special circumstances
> like (a) they are necessary/valuable to achieving a goal set for the
> event or (b) they are local and will be helping with various aspects
> of making the event happen. Then perhaps would begin the process going
> through the rest in some order. The order I would prefer is one that
> helps sort candidates for subsidies into something more reasonable
> than the date of request, even random would be better than that.

Usually the organizers and people helping with different aspects of the
event fit in circumstance (a). For the others a ranking-based
sorting will fit well, indeed.  

> > For sure some people will be offended with the evaluation made by the
> > eligible ones and might question the fairness and the transparency of
> > the process. From my past experiences there is no easy way to deal with
> > it. It needs tact and time for people to cool off.
> 
> We'll probably have to live with that result to some extent. But I'd
> like to stop living with the result that people making the funding
> decisions are themselves questioning the process used and whether it
> was fair to everyone.

We improved the subsidy process a lot during the last couple years but
it will be a long way until we establish a process that everyone
involved in making decisions agree that it's the ideal process. IMHO we
will learn by doing and I would love to see the outcome of this ranking
process in practice for our next FUDCon. 

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