On Wed, 2006-07-26 at 12:42 +0200, Holger Levsen wrote:
> I'll go on now with Fabians original mail which started this thread:
>
> > Here is a list of such tasks that I am aware of:
> > * The Final Report
> > * originally my task, now a total uncertainty since a
> > number of aspects were undecided and it's unknown what
> > the current goals are.
>
> Fabian, what is uncertain to you? I firmly believe we should come up with such
> a report again, as it's very helpful to give to sponsors and it's also a way
> to mention those sponsors in the news again.
Before starting on last year's report, there was a lot of discussion
behind the scenes about the intended audience. A compromise was the
result, where the report was (in my opinion) geared mostly towards
Debian enthusiasts and not specifically towards Debian developers who
attended the conference. I believe the latter group received some
satisfaction from the report because they could show it to others and
say "I was there, I experienced this" -- or they could recall fond
memories themselves. Sponsors got their share of the positive publicity
by being associated with a well perceived conference ("we made this
possible"). The organisers had a chance to show off their work ("we put
our personal time and effort into this, and we did well"). Others
received a message of a complex but creative event, and the report
covered the major highlights as well as some trivia, so there was
something there for most people. In the best case, the casual reader
wished they had been there.
It wasn't a decision that was meant to be set in stone for all DebConfs
to come. The choice was a compromise, adjusted to that particular
conference, the current needs and resources available at the time. Other
options are possibly available now, though unexplored. One possibility
is to make a report that is more directly targeted at sponsors. I toyed
with such a possibility before DebConf5 and again before DebConf6. It
could consist of more directly showing the flow of money being turned
into something useful at the conference -- speaking in simplified terms:
"when you sponsored amount X, we used it to do Y". But after some
initial experiments, I decided to drop that idea at least for DebConf5
because I knew it relied on very accurate and timely available
book-keeping, and it could easily become quite boring. The idea to
collect personal impressions appealed to me more, and my guess was that
it would impress sponsors just as much, if not more. It was also easier
and less prone to failure, since the writing work was distributed over
several persons. Would you believe that less than half of the people who
were asked to write something actually did? (I guess you would, since I
didn't assume total participation.)
During DebConf6, however, there was little chance to have a real
discussion about how the report should evolve. I was asked to take on
the task of producing it, but the actual details were postponed by
consensus among those that had time to even consider it. Other, more
pressing tasks took up most of the time and energy available. The
question was left open, and I hoped to raise it again when I had gotten
home some time later.
Then came the delegation discussions, the delegation, the withdrawal...
So I'm uncertain about what the current team thinks the report should
achieve and how. (Aside from the uncertainty regarding the current
composition of the team.)
Then there are questions of content, as well. If the report should
highlight major aspects of the event, should we explore the negative
themes as well as the positive ones? DebConf6 has already gotten much
more attention than DebConf5 had at this point, and that background is
what the Final Report is leaning on.
I could go on, but I think the above captures the essence of the
uncertainty.
> > * Sponsor packages/bags
> > * intended to be sent to sponsors along with a copy of the
> > Final Report
> > * last known location (to my knowledge) of materials is
> > with Gunnar; intended to be shipped to me for assembly
> > and coordinated delivery to the sponsors.
>
> What's in those bags? Just the bags the participants got (plus final report)
> or something else?
It's the leftovers from the bags that the participants got, yes. So
there's proceedings, the tourist brochures, the IMSS map, etc. I believe
there are also T-shirts in there, but I'm not sure.
> > * A financial report
> > * presumably to go with the book-keeping of DebConf6, as
> > required (?) by Mexican authorities, other authorities
> > and/or sponsors,
> > * of which a summary was to be included in the sponsor
> > packages.
>
> AFAIK the budget has been in subversion and on paper. AFAIK the papers are at
> Gunnar and Gabi, and they will need to come up with the numbers, or make the
> report themselves or send the papers to someone else to do the work.
Ok, this matches my impression. I included this task in my list since
it's part of the dependencies of the other tasks. There is a limited
amount of time during which the sponsorship packages and the report have
to be done. Then, the window of opportunity is lost and it doesn't make
much sense to complete the work anymore.
That's why I asked which tasks *must* be done -- perhaps there is a
chance to decouple them and have more flexibility.
> > What is the minimal set of tasks that must be done to bring DebConf6 to
> > a (legal) conclusion?
>
> I would say:
> - financial report
> - reimburstments
> - final report
> - a press release to announce the final report
I would think that the financials -- report/bookkeeping and
reimbursements -- are the only things that *must* be done, while the
rest are things that are very desirable but won't mean legal trouble for
anyone if they aren't finished. For example, there are surely laws that
apply to the sponsorship money received, but there is no law or even
agreement with the sponsors that applies to a final report.
> To track these four tasks (or how many we end up with..) I suggest to open
> tickets in the request tracker (rt.debconf.org) and to track the progress of
> them with it (making debconf-team@lists.debconf.org the owner of the
> tickets?)
Ok, I see that you have opened the tickets. Hopefully there will be more
clarity, so we can start closing them soon :)
--
Fabian Fagerholm <fabbe@paniq.net>
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