On 14/10/14 at 16:46 +0200, martin f krafft wrote: > also sprach Lucas Nussbaum <leader@debian.org> [2014-10-14 14:25 +0200]: > > - budget team sends the budget to debconf chairs for review (and > > possibly integrates feedback) > > - the debconf chairs forward the budget to the DPL, with their advice > > (ranging from "everything is OK" to "we should be careful about > > that"). > > - the DPL considers the debconf chairs' advice and makes a decision > > accordingly. > > I find this troublesome in multiple ways: > > [ ... ] It seems that if we change the process to: - budget team sends the budget for review to debconf chairs + DPL (who will give the final approval) It addresses your major concerns: - there's only one discussion (less complexity) - the budget team is presenting the budget to the DPL, not the chairs While at the same time, it addresses most of my concerns: - the DebConf chairs are not circumvented, and still get the first say - the decision about the overall allocation of Debian funds is still made by the DPL Would that work for you? > If it looks like we'll fail to meet the approved budget (which may > well already include Debian funds as income), then we might need to > investigate the possibility for Debian to commit more funds ahead of > time. Until more funds are committed, the budget won't be met, other > sources of income have to be sought, and expenses cut. This is the > whole purpose of budgeting. I disagree with that. Expenses should be decided based on their importance, not based on whether money is available at a given time. If you do the latter, you end up with situations where travel sponsorship cannot be allocated because there's not enough sponsorship money received *yet*. > If DebConf e.V. fails to pay bills in the end, then it is primarily > our responsibility to deal with that, not Debian's. We are making > a budget and trying to approach DC15 with all of our professional > experience combined to prevent this from happening. Proper budgeting > (in combination with good books and controlling) means that we (a) > find out about problems before they arise, and (b) can identify > sensible ways forward quickly without scrambling for answers when we > don't have the time. It might primarily be DebConf e.V.'s responsibility, but it's primarily Debian's problem if we fail to organize a DebConf that meets Debian's needs. So it's also up to Debian to ensure that DebConf will be a success. > > In the presented budget, I'd like to see some elements about "risk > > handling": What would happen if we raised 30% less than expected, > > 20% less than expected, 10% less than expected? And the answer > > should probably not be "oh, Debian will naturally pay the > > difference from its reserves" or "we will remove all travel > > sponsorship from our budget". This part doesn't need to be very > > detailed. A list of possible cost saving moves, with estimate > > savings, and priorities, would be enough. > > The budgets I've worked with usually come with worst/base/best-case > scenarios. The base case is the one to aim for, but should new > information lead us to believe that we are not going to make it, or > that we could do more, then we can consult the worst- and best-case > scenarios to make suggestions for revisions. > > Would this work? > > In my experience, identifying concrete cost-saving steps at this > stage is lost effort. It's more important to have a good > understanding of the whole picture, and I think worst/base/best-case > scenarios are best for that. I would prefer to have a rough common agreement on priorities in terms of cost reduction. We can leave that discussion for later, but it should happen before expenses that are lower priority are made (or decisions that have consequences on such expenses). > > Q: So why involve the chairs at all? > > A: The chairs are the ones trusted by the project to know what > > organizing DebConf involves, so they are the best placed to > > advise the DPL on whether the proposed budget makes sense. > > Two points to this, and I am not trying to start a flamefest. If you > feel like I am in error still, please reply in a separate thread at > least. I am annoyed by how you are making demands about appropriate ways to reply to your statement. I am not interested in having a meta-discussion about the role of Chairs now. We have had enough of that in the past. > > Q: Isn't the process too complex? > > A: I don't think so. Informing the team feels quite natural. Using > > chairs as proxy too. If there's a discussion between the budget team > > and chairs about some aspects, the thread can simply be forwarded to the > > DPL to avoid repeating the same arguments when the budget is presented > > to the DPL. > > One of the core problems that the chairs (and dc-team as a whole) > have had in the past was that they would be involved on all levels, > in all decisions, across all topics. I think you are mixing "informing the team" and "asking the team to participate in the decision". If you believe that the team has been sufficiently informed about the budget choices that the budget team made, then fine, no need to send the budget you are going to request approval for to the team. > We are just talking budgeting here and you are already suggesting > that it's the most normal thing to use chairs as a proxy. This means > you are asking the chairs to find the time to deal with budgeting > (in addition to all the other things they have to do), understand > what's going on to the point where they can advise the DPL on the > budget, and be able to channel feedback into modifications of the > budget. The fact that you seem to consider that budgeting is a minor topic that doesn't desserve the full attention of the chairs worries me deeply. Budget-related issues have been the cause of quite a lot of stress during the organization of several editions of DebConf. > To me, it sounds like this would be exactly the setup we are > currently trying to avoid or move away from. > > And hence I'd really rather see the process as being in the court of > the budget team until they choose to go to the chairs or the DPL > — whoever can make a binding approval — and be done with it. > > Ideally, the approval comes from the chairs, because then the budget > team can assume that the other party has sufficient DebConf orga > knowledge. And conversely, the chairs know the budget team members, > ideally to the point where they can trust their judgement on the > budget, rather than having to scrutinise it themselves. This is not about trust. This is about defining a process that offers sufficient external review to avoid some of the problems we have encountered in the past. It seems that you have some unspoken fears about this review from DebConf chairs and the DPL. It might be useful to do this review work rather sooner than later, so that we all know if your fears were justified :-) Lucas
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