Hello, Note:We will have an additional BoF at this DebConf. We will try to broadcast live that session and to take live comments from IRC, so that also the not sponsored people (and all interested people) could discuss.
It is hard to improve things. The order we spend money is: venue rental, accom, food, <a few other nice things>, travel. If travel is prioritized low, and we always are short of money, travel will keep being last.
We could improve ranking. IMHO we should not do travel sponsorship in penta or any web based tools.
I think we should write a detailed page on wiki (with requirement, what we things are the criteria to ask for sponsorship and so on...), and provide a email interface (ticket system or a private mailing list), so that people should read instruction and be more verbose on why they ask sponsorship.
ciao cate