Re: Followups from Council phone call monday — Budget discussion for this year and beyond

Stephen John Smoogen smooge at gmail.com
Wed Oct 14 00:02:41 UTC 2015


On 13 October 2015 at 15:12, Matthew Miller <mattdm at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> Here's the rough notes from the call:
>
>     - Inside Red Hat, budget is due _way_ early now. We'll need to
>       adjust our planning around that. (Specifically, we need it in by
>       October.)
>
>     - This year's budget request is set as same as last year's; we
>       won't know for sure until possibly as late as March what we
>       actually get.
>
>     - In the future, we need to do our request planning in the Flock
>       timeframe. (Discussion before Flock, high-bandwidth in-person
>       session at Flock, followup and ratification after.)
>
>     - Council (and specifically Remy as community action/impact lead)
>       will work to thoroughly understand budget request, and then act
>       as contact for the finance people. Remy will also help maintain
>       an overall "state of the budget" document as we go through the
>       year.
>

I have had some experience with budgets and can help if needed.

>     - Given the long period between request and actual budget, makes
>       sense to also have a second round of planning at the start of the
>       fiscal year (which is March, and years are named after the one in
>       which they end, so we're in FY16 right now, and the upcoming
>       budget is FY17.)
>

I would say that this should go with the quarterly budget reviews as
sort of review 0. Because budget meetings can become long vast times
of "KILL ME NOW." type meetings these are especially good to have an
agenda, and someone who is going to run that meeting quickly and
cleanly with all sorts of side conversations to be tabled onto mailing
lists or ticket systems.

>     - Right now, all money is allocated to ambassadors through regions,
>       including Flock and FUDCons, and except for FADs. We want to do
>       that differently for FY18 — probably split out at least Flock,
>       and have non-regional budget for marketing and other centralized
>       community activities.
>
>     - If we want to do more with our money, and request more as needed,
>       we need to make sure we're spending what we have already — the
>       Council should do a quarterly budget review with ambassadors (and
>       in future any other groups). In the future, "no budget" should
>       mean "no spending".
>
>     - NA ambassadors in particular need to get a budget organized. APAC
>       and LATAM need to get better at spending the money that's
>       budgeted.
>

Since EMEA isn't mentioned, I am guessing it is running smoothly.
Would it help if they went over what they are doing well?

>     - We want to ask for more money to grow Fedora. In order to do
>       that, we need to demostrate that the money we do have is being
>       spent well. Need ambassadors to connect spending to results in a
>       a way that _we_ can take to the budget people.
>
> Not mentioned at the meeting, but a thing I'm concerned with and have
> mentioned before: having a Fedora presence at conferences is good, but
> is it the best use of Fedora money? Do we grow new users at Linux fests
> in the 21st century? What things could we do instead?

Would need to have a longer description of what you are meaning here
to be able to say anything.

-- 
Stephen J Smoogen.


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