On 14.05.2013 08:58, Didier 'OdyX' Raboud wrote:
As a final point, I disagree with cate's proposal to forbid people requesting travel sponsorship from joining the herb@ team: people asking for sponsorship _are_ a (significant) part of the Debian community and I think we would loose some precious diversity by taking them off them the team. Then, herb@ team members requesting sponsorship must obviously stay off any decisions related to them.
Last year I noticed some "uneasiness" discussing about some herb people travel sponsorship. Considering the budget constrains, I worry about the difficulties if the sponsor line is near such people.
Consider also that some people complained about fairness of our sponsorship (It was mostly about families and children, which BTW we did not sponsor, but attendees don't know it). So I think transparency is needed, to avoid useless discussions.
About losing diversity: it could be a problem, OTOH usually herb people are "senior" developers, who possibly asked travel sponsorship on previous DebConf, so they know the needs of travel sponsorship people. Additionally a "requirement" of herb was to have many "senior" people, aka people who know deeply Debian, personally know many DDs and teams.
The problem is not only to be fair, but to "convince" people that we acted fair.
About food+accommodation sponsorship: the rules are simpler, and additionally to be part of herb team, one should demonstrate the commitment to Debian, so I don't think people will think we will act in a non-fair manner.
As for me, I'm happy to serve on the herb@ team again, whatever route is taken.
I would like to be an non-voting member for travel sponsorship, which BTW was my idea also last year), so I would support herb about mail to registration, database, scripts (checks and "automatic" mails). And I would like to serve also to the food+accommodation sponsorship "sub-team" (it needs more locals to evaluate local volunteers, and there is much more interaction with registration stuffs).
ciao cate