Re: [Debconf-team] Job fair timing and sponsorship criteria
On 04/30/2015 12:34 AM, Jimmy Kaplowitz wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 29, 2015 at 07:37:04PM +0200, Margarita Manterola wrote:
>> I understand where these concerns are coming from. I used to live in
>> Argentina, so I totally understand the problem. However, I also know
>> that the further away you are, the less significant the exact day of
>> the week on which the conference starts, as cheap flights are normally
>> on weekdays, not weekends, and if possible most people don't cross the
>> Atlantic for just one week...
>
> With typical US and Canadian corporate vacation policies, or for work trips the
> need to minimize time away from the office, it's actually quite common to
> attend DebConf for just one week. I've been to 11 DebConfs but only one or two
> DebCamps. As for day of week, arriving in Europe on a Saturday still requires
> departing the Americas on a Friday, impacting the last day of the workweek.
> Arriving on a Friday requires impacting 2/5 of the workweek. When many North
> Americans only get 2 or 3 weeks of vacation annually, that adds up.
>
>> Whatever the case, I'd like to note that we've been discussing the
>> schedule since September or so last year, there was a lot of feedback
>> that was taken into account and accommodated. But nobody had brought
>> this up until now. And we had just called it final last week... I'm
>> very reluctant to now go revisiting the schedule, not because it's not
>> possible, but because we want to move on to other stuff. The constant
>> revisiting of decisions already taken is very frustrating, energy
>> consuming and de-motivating.
>
> I apologize for any de-motivation this thread has caused. Since I'm not
> currently involved in DebConf orga, I was not aware of last week's decisions. I
> only shared my thoughts here because I was encouraged to share them, and am not
> asking you to revisit anything. I don't want to push any specific solution this
> close to the event if final decisions have already been made.
>
> As my original mail said, there are viable options for 2015 besides changing
> the schedule, such as being flexible on sponsorship criteria for the night
> before the job fair. (I'd pay for the one night if I have to, but again, not
> every sponsored attendee can afford that. If nobody else requested sponsorship
> for that night without the rest of DebCamp, this may be a waste of email energy
> except for future years.)
>
> Whether or not anything changes for DebConf15, I hope that for DebConf16 this
> mail will encourage greater clarity in communicating arrival dates and reducing
> the likelihood that people will be arriving on job fair day.
>
>> We've already told quite a bunch of sponsors that the Job Fair is on
>> Saturday, so I would rather we didn't change it now.
>>
>> Also, as mentioned elsewhere, doing it on Sunday has disadvantages as well.
>
> Those points seem quite valid to me.
>
> - Jimmy Kaplowitz
> jimmy@debian.org
All points Jimmy expressed are very valid and should be taken seriously
into consider and make appropriate changes. Of course, if it's too late
for DebConf15 it must be de facto for every other DebConf in future.
Just my 2c,
zlatan
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