Sponsoring event attendees

[inode0]

On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 11:49 AM, Igor Pires Soares
<igorsoares at gmail.com> wrote:
> Em Sáb, 2012-02-18 às 14:58 -0600, inode0 escreveu:
>> One of the things that has always seemed unfair to me about the
>> process is that generally tickets are considered in the order they are
>> created. I don't understand why being quick to ask for a subsidy
>> should make it more likely you will receive a subsidy. That isn't
>> mentioned as a consideration anywhere in our subsidy guidelines as
>> being something we should consider or weigh. In the past I have
>> wondered how we could improve this so the requests are considered in a
>> more sensible order.
>>
>> I have only one idea and it is far from perfect as it adds more people
>> and more process to what already exists. But I'll toss it out for your
>> consideration. Could we just have a request deadline? At the point the
>> deadline arrives we shake the requests up in a hat so the order they
>> came in is irrelevant to the rest of the process. Either the folks
>> already involved or some other volunteers would then go through *all*
>> of the requests ranking them based loosely on the criteria stated in
>> the subsidy guidelines. We sum these rankings up in order to determine
>> the order the requests are considered. My hope is that this would
>> result in more high value requests being funded and fewer at the
>> margin before the limit is reached. Some special consideration needs
>> to be retained in the process for those who are fairly local or
>> otherwise very inexpensive for us to help and for those with special
>> skills that might be desired at the particular event. And I think all
>> requests for travel between regions (as defined by Fedora) should be
>> dealt with as special cases and not as a part of the general process.
>
> Hi John,
>
> I think that we definitely need to establish a deadline. As Robyn
> mentioned we already have done that, but need to be more firm about it.
> In the past even with a deadline some people who filed their requests
> late got their tickets reviewed and approved anyway.

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.

> 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.

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.

If we really do want to evaluate subsidy requests based on the
criteria on the wiki, we do need to in some way consider all the
candidates at once and pick from that pool a selection of people who
will most benefit the event. Going through them one at a time in any
order without some meta-evaluation will lead to what we've seen where
it mostly comes down to are you considered before the funding runs
out.

> 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.

John