Re: Announcing miniDebConf Montreal 2020 -- August 6th to August 9th 2020
Hi,
On 18/02/20 at 23:54 -0600, Gunnar Wolf wrote:
> Most probably, the results will be announced by mail (and not
> communicated during a meeting), because the bid review process has led
> us to need to decide in this way. I cannot speak for the previously
> appointed DebConf Committee¹, but for the iteration I have been
> delegated for, I can promise you we will not hide problems™ — That is,
> once we choose, I can commit that we will not hide the reasoning
> behind our choice. Some of it will not be full-public, as -of course-
> it includes important human interaction bits, but all important points
> will be made public.
You kind-of make it sound like what you promise was not done by the
previous DC Committee. I'd like to point that details about the decision
process and the rationale were provided after the DC20 decision.
See the threads in
https://lists.debian.org/debconf-team/2019/03/threads.html
Specifically https://lists.debian.org/debconf-team/2019/03/msg00021.html
> Within the DebConf committee and the wider DebConf team there have
> been extensive discussions about Israel as a hosting country and we
> acknowledge that there will be some members of Debian that prefer to
> not travel to Israel for political reasons.
>
> Still the Committee felt the upsides of the bid were significant and
> edged well over the Portuguese bid. But it was a close call. The five
> member DebConf committee had a two hour final decision meeting and a
> 3:2 vote in favor of Israel.
And https://lists.debian.org/debconf-team/2019/03/msg00034.html
> You can probably guess what they are, but here's a summary. Most of
> these came up in the public team meeting, before. Not all of us agree
> with all of these points, but they were all discussed:
>
> * There hasn't been a DebConf in Europe (where the majority of regular
> attendees live) for a number of years now - by the old norms we are
> long overdue for one.
> * There are regular DebConf attendees (and orga members) who have stated
> that they wouldn't attend a DebConf in Israel. Although Israel is near
> Europe, we could expect lower attendance than Lisbon.
> * The Haifa bid has on-site University accommodation. This massively
> simplifies things for the organisers.
> * Neither bid has a local team that is as strong as we'd like, but Haifa
> appears to have a small edge here.
> * There are some nationalities that may find it difficult or even
> impossible to visit Israel. This isn't new territory for us; we
> regularly have to deal with attendees being denied visas.
> * Israel has big political issues. I would imagine that a large part of
> our community objects to the country's behaviour toward the Palestinian
> people, for example.
> * We've held DebConf in politically questionable countries before, and
> don't want to preclude a bid for political reasons. Obviously no
> country is perfect, and it's all relative. This may be further than
> we've been, before, though.
> * Along those lines, it would be unfair to a bid team, to let them do
> all the work to prepare a bid, and then reject it because of an issue
> with their country. If there are political requirements for host
> countries, they should be laid out in the submission guidelines.
> * We don't want DebConf to be endorsing a country or a city. But we're
> aware that those optics are unavoidable. Wherever we go, we will bring
> a large portion of our community, have a (presumably) great time, and
> share memories of it for years to come.
>
> Again, we were divided in which of these we supported, which we thought
> the most important, and which we'd state less diplomatically :P
> We spent a good couple of hours trying to build a consensus on a
> selection. Once it was clear that that wasn't going to emerge, we went
> with a vote.
So:
On 18/02/20 at 23:54 -0600, Gunnar Wolf wrote:
> ¹ The fact that one of the Committee members left it, and is quite
> vocal on his opposition to the choice made by it, makes it clear to
> me that, even if the Committee had intended to keep quiet, the truth
> will come out. I'm sure Jonathan can comment on the decision process
> as he lived it. We don't have NDAs.
I must say that I'm a bit shocked by this paragraph. If I summarize:
- you are a member of the current DebConf Committee.
- you take the moral high ground and promise transparency, while the
transparency you promise is no better than the transparency of the
DC20 decision process
- you allude that the Committee that made the DC20 decision intends to
keep something quiet, and that there's a truth that needs to come out.
Lucas
(For context, I was a member of the Committee at the time of the DC20
decision, and resigned on 2019-09-17, see
<20190917135320.GA29926@xanadu.blop.info>)
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