---------- Forwarded Message ----------
Subject: Re: DebConf "Legal" BoF continued - lets get it to a Delegation
Date: Saturday 10 June 2006 08:27
From: Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au>
On Thu, Jun 08, 2006 at 09:31:46PM +0200, Joerg Jaspert wrote:
> So, I propose to delegate [...]
> as the DebConf organizers[1], responsible to organize the yearly
> Conference. The DPL grants the DebConf Organizers the right to use money
> From every legal organization that works for/with Debian, such as SPI in
> America or ffis ev in Germany, to name only two examples, without further
> interaction of the DPL or anyone else, if that money was marked as being
> for the Conference.
For the Mexico conference, aiui, $29k or so was needed in advance
of sponsorship arriving; which wasn't money marked as being for the
conference.
Personally, I've got a few concerns about how the conference is organised,
which I'd like to list privately for your consideration:
1) travel sponsorship seems very obscure; I think that results in
a few people getting worried about it just being the organisers'
friends getting sponsorship, rather than it being anything
sensible. I was pretty surprised to find out Branden apparently
didn't get travel sponsorship to .mx. Having a rule that
sponsorship amounts get published somewhere, and all sponsored
people are expected to do either a proper talk, or a lightning talk
on what the work they've been doing might be a worthwhile idea.
2) food and accommodation sponsorship seem overboard -- it's a good
thing to make it possible for people not to have to have to worry
about cost of living, but it's silly to subsidise people who can
afford their own dinners anyway; having food sponsorship available
on request, and letting people who don't need the subsidy just
go to local restaurants or buy tickets for the sponsored venue
seems much more sensible
3) the distance between the hacklab and the lecture rooms we've had
the past couple of years has been really bad to the point where it's
discouraged people from going to talks
4) it's not entirely clear what the point of the conference is, there
are more than a few possibilities:
-- educate people with talks; in which case we should be
aiming to get good talks and tutorials, and lots of people
there to watch them
-- provide an opportunity for DDs to get together and hack on
stuff; in which case we should be making sure we've got good connectivity
and resources, and minimise distractions and lost time
-- give people a chance to meet face to face, socialise,
reduce aggression and brainstorm new ideas; in which case
we want to make sure people can go to dinner or clubs and go off
in smaller groups
-- provide an excuse to have some fun rather than just hack and
flame each other
-- prove Debian is just as cool as Ubuntu because we can
have expensive conferences too
My impression is we do a little bit of all of these, but get them
confused so that none of them are really achieved as well as they
could be -- so we invite DDs around to hack, but then distract
them by making them prepare a paper and a talk; or we host it in
a nice location with lots of fun stuff to do, then tell them that
debconf is really about work not about fun.
I don't want to say any of the above is a bad idea; but it might
be worth keeping in mind what goal you're trying to meet by flying
people in, or organising the talk slots, or whatever.
5) There doesn't seem to be a lot of feedback from the participants and
speakers to the next year's organisers; which is especially a problem
if the lead organisers stay the same each year.
I'm also not sure why debconf remains free for all comers; that makes
it expensive to have lots of people come (as we don't get additional
income, and get additional expenses in the form of food and lodging as
well as venue size), which limits us to a purely developer conference,
and also means people who could easily afford a registration fee even if it
were optional, aren't presented with that opportunity to support debconf.
The GUADEC fee structure is worth looking at:
* Students & hobbyists: 30 euro
* Professionals (see below): 150 euro
* Staff & volunteers: free
* Speakers: free
* Press: free
* Starting on May 1st these fees increase 15%
* Starting on June 1st these fees increase 30%
* GNOME Foundation members registering as students/hobbyists
get a 100% discount: free registration.
* GNOME Foundation members registering as professionals get a 50%
discount: 75.
* Advisory board companies get 5 free registrations and pay 100
for each extra participant they bring.
* Community partners bringing 5 people or more get 1 free
registration and pay 20 for each extra participant they bring
in a single group reservation.
-- http://guadec.org/GUADEC2006/registration/fees
For comparsion linux.conf.au has three registration levels -- student,
hobbiest and professional, at levels of $100, $250, $600 (all AUD)
respectively. After a few years of running a successful conference,
that attracts 500 or so people to listen to Linux development talks,
we have about twice as many professionals as hobbiests, and twice as
many hobbiests as students; in spite of the professional level not being
a lot more than a way to show your support for linux.conf.au and Linux
in general. It makes the budget much easier to manage, and dramatically
reduces our reliance on sponsors.
Basically, I have a few concerns related to how debconf money is being
handled; and at this point, I'm reluctant to delegate authority to obtain
funds from supporting organisations like SPI. That there doesn't seem
to be a clear idea exactly who should be delegates also bothers me a bit.
Andreas, since you seem to be the nominated lead, feel free to forward
this mail to -team or otherwise if you think that would be helpful;
or otherwise feel free to deal with these issues as you think is best.
(I'm not sure why Marga at least wasn't on the Cc list; if someone who
follows the debconf internals closer than I do thinks there are others
this needs to be forwarded to, please do so)
> [3] There was the suggestion to always CC such mails to
> leader@debian.org, and no answer within 2 days means implicit OK. To
> make it legally more OK, as for example in Germany usually only the
> "board of directors" of a association is allowed to use the
> money.
In this case, the relevant board of directors would be ffis' or SPI's, who
would still be in the loop anyway afaics. So I don't think that is a problem.
Cheers,
aj
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