Sponsoring event attendees

[inode0]

On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 3:50 PM, mario juliano grande balletta
<mario.balletta at gmail.com> wrote:
> Drawing on experience from other areas of my background, I would say
> if a project member is scheduled to deliver a presentation, teaching a
> class, fulfilling a specific duty, like camera work, etc
>
> Then sponsoring an individual needing some assistance to attend an
> event so they can fulfill their obligations is useful to fedora and
> the community.  Now, granted I am not saying all requests for
> assistance must meet the criteria above, but, isn't that why the
> videos are posted to youtube?

Hey Mario,

Getting the perspective on things from folks with different
backgrounds is always helpful and I'm happy to hear from you in
particular.

What you have described here is pretty much what we try to do. Help
people get places where they bring value to the project and its
mission when they need some help. There are lots of trade-offs and a
fair amount of subjectivity involved in that process and we agree
there always will be. My main concern about this "process" is maybe
characterized as community relations. We all just want the Fedora
community to have confidence in it. Well, we want it to also
accomplish its goals while being good stewards of Fedora's resources
too!

> Businesses try to reduce travel overhead by using video conferencing
> and posting video sessions.  Maria and her team are working on similar
> technology that will be useful in making more of that available,
> besides youtube.

Our community almost entirely functions and communicates remotely.
Pretty much the nature of our project. But there are times when
getting people in one place to focus on particular tasks is important
enough to our mission that we can help facilitate some face to face
work opportunities. If you look at our past Fedora Activity Days
(FADs) you'll see a number of them were devoted to improving tools for
remote collaboration.

> So, I feel the funds for travel assistance should be used for actual
> specific fedora business needs.  If individuals who are challenged
> cannot arrange travel to a fedora event, then perhaps reaching out to
> the group might help, voluntary contributions, donations, etc

Excellent suggestions. There is a voluntary collection going on now to
help a contributor get from LATAM to EMEA for an important event. I
think there is an important difference here between a business and the
Fedora community though. In a business the boss can just make this
decision. We don't have a boss to decide which ambassadors and other
contributors can be funded to represent Fedora at SELF or FOSDEM. So
our community, having resources entrusted to it to promote Fedora at
such events must find agreeable ways to make those decisions
ourselves.

> Sharing rides, sharing travel points from airline or hotel programs.
> There are alternative methods, we have to be creative and think
> outside the box.  I don't think a written policy with conditions can
> be drafted to cover every situation, so common sense, the global
> picture, fedora objectives, individual status all need to be factored
> in when evaluating travel requests.

Yeah, I agree with everything there.

> I apologize if any of that seems negative or offensive, just trying to
> take a sterile clinical approach.  :-)

Thanks Mario.

John