Thanks for the minutes Marga. On Mon, Dec 17, 2007 at 04:57:27PM -0300, Margarita Manterola wrote: > > One point that has troubled us in the past is that some people sign up > for sponsorship (travel, food and/or lodging) get it, and then don't > show up. If it's only for travel, then it's money back, if it's food > or lodging, we need to arrange with the hotel in order to get that > money back else we lose it. > We would like to be able to prevent these situations as much as > possible. One of the ideas that came up is making people that sign up > for sponsored stuff pay a small amount (~ 10 USD) through credit-card > charge via SPI (can someone confirm this is possible?). This way we > can have more certainty that they are coming. However, this would > mean extra hassle for very little money. > What do you think about it? Any other ideas? I have not shared my thoughts after my experience doing the room allocation this past year. Here goes some stuff. There are 2 main problems: a) People asking for sponsored lodging/food, confirming and then being unable to attend since they were waiting for sponsorship until last minute, or expecting get the money magically to their trips. b) people who cannot make attend due to personal unforeseeable issues. Most of the people in the case b) are usually big Debian contributors, who mail telling they can not attend or that they are coming less days and give a good reason for this. Most of the people in the case a) are usually people unknown or not very unknown in Debian. I like Marga's suggestion, but as I said in the meeting maybe the money we are getting for this $10*250 = $2500 is not worth it for all the hassle it'll be: check everybody has paid, print invoices for some people, how to bill it legally, etc So my suggestion is being stricter about the people who gets sponsored lodging and food. If the name does not ring a bell (google site:debian.org and get some useful contribution) just say no, and give this people a week or so to mail back to the sponsoring team enumerating their contributions to Debian... no sponsored people staying with sponsored people -------------------------------------------------- Some people get their companies pay them the trip (lucky them!), and they are forced to get a hotel room and food for their own. I would create the "my employer pays but i want to be with the sponsored people" option, this people would pay their lodging and food, but would stay with the rest of the Debian folks. Maybe with the only advantage of being in the smaller rooms if they ask to. Of course, this option is as well for people who feel is not ok ask for sponsored stuff because their salary is nice or want their parner/friend/whatever attending and staying together. This option should be open to people who signs up for the conference very late and we should have already set a price for this in the registration. *no* sponsored debconf ---------------------- Related, but not exaclty the same topic, since this has nothing to do with my experience... I guess I'm not the only one with the feeling that debcamp is a paid holiday before the conference for some people... So I think we should only sponsor DebCamp for people who is really going to do stuff (This is not so hard to know for most of the people...), and give the oportunity of being at debcamp just haging out with the people and paying your expenses for those days. This would mean have to ask for sponsored Debcamp (explaining what you are planning to do) and ask for sponsored Debconf (and explaining what you do in Debian). Btw, since I'm on it, we have to make clear in the registration form the sponsored days, last year some people believed they have bed from sunday to monday as well. Ana
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