Re: [Debconf-team] 'meeting' tonight: General discussion
On Wed, Nov 4, 2015 at 6:11 AM, Bernelle Verster <bernellev@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all
>
> Sorry for the late notice, tonight's meeting is again a general discussion chat.
I don't know if I'll be at meeting, so here are my (more than a) few
cents. Go ahead and ping me in IRC, but there's at least 50% chance
I'll be busy.
> Things to note:
>
> * Daniel asks people to look at the governance proposals [1] and [2]
> and comment / discuss what they would like to have as "governance"
> going into 2016.
Please note there was another alternative proposed, that has support. [1]
That proposal, which I made, was to use the text of the original
DebConf delegation from 2011 [2].
Although it's a huge challenge to find people committed enough to
stick with DebConf year after year, and there may if been some rough
edges in the most recent "teams" implementation, I came to strongly
believe in what the former chairs were trying to do. They were trying
to build a sustainable organization that would live on after a single
DebConf, that learned from experiences and builds upon them, while
still leaving room for innovation.
The idea of long running subteams makes sense, particularly in the
fundraising area, where we have recurring long term contact with a
subset of our sponsors. (How the subteams are structured is an
implementation detail, so I'm not set on the lead/shadows/mentors
formal structure).
Taking a step back and looking at the conflict between local-team and
global-team. It's not inevitable. What we should be striving to do, is
to have each bid/bid-team set the major expectations, and have the
committee evaluate not just the team, but also the bid. If the bid
team sets the expectations properly and the committee selects the bid,
that agreement should be considered akin to a contract between local
and global, in that it sets expectations for the following 18 months.
The selection committee should not select a bid that has something in
it they won't be able to support after the selection is made, even if
it means delaying the selection process, and even opening it up for
additional bids. The bid team should make clear in their bid, how open
they are to working with the global team. If a bid is selected and
their is a disagreement down the road, people should take a breather
and see what the initial expectations were.
We really need to strive for both a stong local and strong global
teams, so we can have a
> * The website is coming along well - is the current one on wafer already? [3]
> There is talk of a sprint in January, which may involve flying people
> to Cape Town. Stefano knows more here, we should discuss the options.
Is this for just DC16, or would this work be applied to future
DebConfs? Also how much budget are we discussing? My quick thoughts
are that a sprint could be justified, if it's not one-off work, in
that it won't be leveraged for future DebConfs, and/or the budget
being requested isn't very large. IE: If we are thinking wafer has a
good shot at being the new summit/web/everything for DC16+, and it's
not a large monetary amount, then this makes sense.
> * I'm still waiting on a flyer draft.
>
> * For fundraising, we should also discuss and agree on whether we want
> to send the swag to sponsors again. DC15 had a hiccup here, but DC13
> and DC14 did send swag to sponsors. And whatever we decide we can then
> tell sponsors consistently and early if they ask. Daniel's opinion is
> that there are very valid reasons to at least send bags and shirts,
> but feel more ambivalent about sending swag from other vendors.
> And to note: Michael (azeem) suggested we should have a more organized
> push to debrief DC15 sponsors, and asking them about whether they
> appreciated and/or in future want the sponsor bag would be one. DC16
> can also add their thoughts here.
1) Some reading [2] on fundraising suggests that surprise gifts to
donors can be effective, but if it seems like the donor is "buying"
the gift, it can be instead be counterproductive. It clearly strongly
discourages promising the gift as a reward for donation. (Bear in mind
donors motivations are somewhat different than sponsors.)
2) For sponsors at silver+ I feel it is useful to show how their logos
were featured
3) For sponsors below silver, I think it might be useful to show how
their logos could have been featured if they were silver+?
4) Nice to give shirts to our sponsors who couldn't attend (I know
when my company was sponsoring and I couldn't attend, the shirts were
appreciated.) Probably this only applies to sponsors that are true
fans of Debian.
5) Swag from other sponsors, I don't have a strong opinion. I
certainly don't think it would be ideal to send only swag from other
sponsors and no shirts. Putting my sponsor hat on, I think it's useful
to know what other sponsors are giving, so I can get a sense of what's
allowed/expected, but I wouldn't miss it if it weren't sent. Overall
it will likely influence sponsors to be more likely to provide swag,
which has it's own pros and cons.
> * I've forwarded an email from the accommodation people. I think we
> should announce the dates.
If there is realistically no chance of dates changing, that sounds great.
Cheers,
Brian
[1] - https://www.mail-archive.com/debconf-team@lists.debconf.org/msg13308.html
[2] - https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/03/msg00005.html
[3] - http://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerdooley/2012/08/08/donor-gifts/
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