Hi all,
Richard, I'll join Gaudenz in thanking you -again and again- for your
hard, great quality work, and for explaining to us what do all those
bits of money mean.
> As the travel sponsoring team (herb team) would like to approve today
>
(2012-06-15) at 1900 utc in a meeting as many reasonable travel
> sponsoring requests as possible, we would like to have a clear approval
> of how much we are allowed to spend.
> > Travel Sponsorship
> > ==================
> >
> > My instinct is:
> >
> > - If you want to go low and conservative, 10 k$ for travel
> > sponsorship.
> >
> > - If you want to go reasonable, 15 k$ is a fiscally responsible amount
> > for travel sponsorship.
> >
> > - Travel team sort of implied 18k$ would fund everyone they thought
> > should get money.
>
> That's not my understanding. For that we would need about 26k$ if we
> reduce all requests above 500$ by 20% and about 32k$ if we want to grant
> the full requested amount. That is to grant all the request of those
> that got a rating above 18 on a scale of -100 to 100. Or about 2/3 of
> the requests. IMHO that's the maximum we want to spend. Clearly there is
> not that much money available at the moment.
>
> The 18k come from my understanding of an earlier mail thread that it's
> OK to calculate with using all the dc11 surplus now, because this is just
> a worst case scenario and we are quite sure that we will get more
> money. At that time my interpretation of the current budget was that
> this leaves us with 18k for travel sponsoring.
I agree with Richard's assessment. Gaudenz, I think the key is what
Richard says in the last bullet: "18k$ would fund everyone they
thought should get money" — This "they thought" means –in my reading–
everybody rated high enough to deserve the money.
Regarding Gaudenz's note, has this 80%-of-the-requested-amount
startegy been considered for this year? I think it will make it
fairer. Later on, we can tell people we have got more money and grant
the 100%, if possible for us.
So, given the current outlook, I'd suggest sending mails telling
people they got the sponsorship TODAY until we reach the US$15,000
mark, and –if things look bright– push it for the US$18,000 as we feel
more confident. I believe (following his three points) 10K is too low,
and we _can_ commit to the 15K.
What do the others thing on this topic?
If my penta-fu is right, we can sponsor the top 17 rated people with ~$15K. That's almost half of the people that requested sponsorship. If this calculation is correct, I say let's go for it and send the mails out *now*.