Sponsoring event attendees

[inode0]

On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 7:19 PM, Igor Pires Soares <igorsoares at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

I agree with your point too.

>> > 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.

I don't have a suggestion about a criterion for who decides but I do
have one for how they decide and that is explained in our current
travel subsidy guidelines here:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Sponsoring_event_attendees

It doesn't need to be a separate group who does this, it could be the
same group who is making the funding decisions. I just think we'd do a
better job if we made one pass through all the requests individually
before as a group evaluating them one at a time.

Here is one possible way I have imagined this working. Let's say there
are 5 contributors involved in making the decisions. We clean out the
special cases that we agree on first. Then with the rest we each rank
them in some range (say 1 to 3 with 1 being high value, 2 being very
high value, and 3 being unbelievably Beefy Miracle with extra relish
value). Sum up the individual rankings and as a group work through all
the requests in the order this produces. (Probably still need wiggle
room in the process but that is the general idea.)

John