Re: [Debconf-team] Three things to note please
Hi Kris
My sentiments are perfectly aligned with yours. I am trying to get the greater team on board with this early, as they get anxious if they perceive things jumped on them or done behind their back.
I see the components of this competition as 'pre-competitive': the ShowMeBox is a Debian thing and other sponsors can join in, but I also absolutely agree that with the effort involved, we can realistically only do one competition/outreach initiative.
So, DebConf team, (also please see thread below):
1. How long would we need to decide yes, we are on board, or no?
2. What more information do we need to make this decision?
3. Can I give a deadline of mid-October to bikeshed about this?
4. In my mind it is a huge plus, aside from the benefits that Jonas and Kris already mentioned, that we have two long-time Debian people driving this, not to mention the rest of the team. I think this initiative is really special. At the same time, I don't want the wider team to feel rushed or... Well, I don't want to piss anyone off, basically.
Best regards
Bernelle
On Monday, September 14, 2015, Kristoffer Rose <
krisrose@debian.org> wrote:
In terms of feedback, I can say that what has gotten my colleagues inside Two Sigma excited about sponsoring this is that we can demonstrate that it is possible in local communities in Africa to do data analysis of locally available data, and in this way promote global awareness that data analysis is an important field of study that everyone can pursue. (And the best can even win a prize!)
For Two Sigma it is an added incentive that we can promote that we contributed to this being possible by releasing Beaker into open source, so I would like the project to use Beaker if possible, however, note that Two Sigma does this by making sure Beaker is *in* debian and thus widely available, not through a custom install or product giveaway or something. (So the "Beaker is a product of Kris' company" remark is not really fair.)
Two Sigma is not per se excited about the hardware: that is the means to make the competition as wide as possible even for people who do not have equipment (because the cost per participant team can be kept at $50-$80). I hope that we can persuade Two Sigma to sponsor several hundreds of these (and that the Cape Town organization will help set up distribution channels for them). This makes this project rather unique: I do not see any of your other "hardware sponsorships" being that broad.
Finally, I think you'll need to think a bit harder on how many competitions involving students you want: I fear that the interest in sponsoring and providing infrastructure for a competition as broad as we are proposing will dwindle if you try to position it as "one in several competitions"...especially because, excuse my directness, the likely outcome of the others will be a handful of tablets that won't really make a competition and probably will not really promote debian.
I know it is early and that brainstorming and generalization is fun but do recognize a special opportunity when you get it: Full funding of ShowMeBox would involve travel ("give a multi-day data analysis
class in January in Cape Town to the people who will distribute the
hardware and teach the students how to do data analysis with it") as
well as the final equipment ("build 300 computers fully installed with
debian data analysis pure blend and some network access mechanism") and
distribution ("send out people with knowledge to spend a half day
explaining the equipment at each school"). So this *needs* local partners, and is quite unlike anything you can solicit from other sponsors, in my estimation...
Finally, full disclaimer: at this point Two Sigma is funding contributing Beaker into Debian, but Two Sigma has not yet decided to fund the actual full competition: that is a proposal I will bring them in October. Please make it easy for me to say "the DebConf organization is on board" in a way that does not feel like a vacuous statement (like "we support all our sponsors!")!
Best regards,
Kris
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