gmane.linux.debian.conference.team

Re: Call for Help: DebConf travel sponsorship team

Christian PERRIER — 2013-05-17T21:14:29

Quoting Steve Langasek (vorlon< at >debian.org):



That suggestion seems to make sense to me. Indeed, is there a reason
for the team to not start the review until the registration deadline
is over (hmm, maybe clumsy en_FR but you get the point, I guess).

The only problem is that we aren't sure yet of who the Herb team is
made (no idea who had this idea of naming the team "Herb" but it makes
me feel like we're pot smokers as this is what "herbe" means *also* in
French).

Re: Call for Help: DebConf travel sponsorship team

Gunnar Wolf — 2013-05-17T20:52:02

Steve Langasek dijo [Fri, May 17, 2013 at 01:41:11PM -0500]:

Right, I (sh|c)ould have set References: and Reply-To: in my original
mailing :-}


Ok, I'm happy to have the two of you on board \o/


I completely agree, and that's why I have sent related discussions
(the rating mechanism) to the mailing list. Of course, now we have to
discuss based on what to do the rating itself. I expect the mailing
list and the #debconf-team channel to be good venues, prefering the
list as it is archived and easier to follow (or find information in).


Right, important and good suggestions!
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Re: Call for Help: DebConf travel sponsorship team

Steve Langasek — 2013-05-17T18:41:11

(Heh.  making people edit References: headers in their mail client, kind of
a high bar, isn't it? ;)



If more volunteers are still needed for the Herb team, I'd be willing to
participate.  I have been a member of the team in the past and am familiar
with the general principles.



I would hope that this process decision is made by the DebConf team as a
whole, and not by the Herb team exclusively, as I think a certain
"separation of powers" is necessary here.  To be precise, the decision about
sponsorship /criteria/ should not be made by the Herb team alone; the Herb
team should have the delegated authority to execute on the sponsorship
criteria, but the criteria themselves should be reached through open,
team-wide dsicussion.


I would like to suggest that any requests that seem "unreasonable" to any
member of the Herb team should be flagged early and immediately result in an
email to the applicant, expressing this concern and requesting
clarification.  Some applicants might have a good reason; others might
choose to request less sponsorship once they understand that this would
impact whether they receive any sponsorship at all.

Cheers,

Re: Call for Help: DebConf travel sponsorship team

Lior Kaplan — 2013-05-16T17:47:04


Testing... 1 2 3 (:

Anyway, as stated above - after receiving sponsorship for debconf for a few
years, I'll be happy to help with the process itself.

Kaplan

Re: Rethinking the way travel sponsorship works

Gunnar Wolf — 2013-05-16T15:05:19

Didier 'OdyX' Raboud dijo [Wed, May 15, 2013 at 10:31:54AM +0200]:

Right. I share your concerns. I think the information I would be
comfortable disclosing are aggregated (or even individual) numbers,
stating total travel amount, amount requested/granted by us, and *at
most* a coarse geographical area. So, say, we would report that "we
funded CHF7500 of travel expenses (out of CHF10,350, with CHF2,850
paid by the sponsorees) for the attendance of 6 people coming from
North America". Maybe also the percentage of people requesting
sponsorship that got it — "We managed to sponsor the travel of 45 out
of the 70 people that requested it".


This could work this year, say, for people from Europe. however, if we
were to find a line saying that a Mexican DD got CHF3000, I'm sure I'd
get somebody questioning as to why am I travelling on business class
on Debian funds.

Maybe I'd agree not *publishing* this list, but formally agreeing to
disclose the (full, with names) list to DDs requesting it, subject to
treatment similar to debian-private (or even posting the list to
debian-private). I still don't like the idea of being able to single
out individuals, but I could agree to this.


I'm not sure if I care about outsiders here. Yes, we want to show
sponsors we give good use of their money. But I care more about
insiders who have shown their lack of happiness with the current
scheme.
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Re: Traveling information: Train via Germany use "Europa-Spezial Schweiz"

Andreas Tille — 2013-05-16T07:25:36

Hi Daniel,

On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 11:00:55AM +0200, Daniel Pocock wrote:

There is no such thing like "border and back" if you by the "Europa
Spezial" ticket so I can not answer this question.


Feel free to put this information at

   https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf13/Travel/Train

Kind regards

       Andreas.

Re: DC12 Travel Bursaries ("Herb Team"): Ping? Discussion?

Gunnar Wolf — 2013-05-15T21:57:39

Gaudenz Steinlin dijo [Wed, May 15, 2013 at 09:36:05AM +0200]:

Sure — Lets wait, I hope some people reply, bringing more diversity to
the team.
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Re: Rethinking the way travel sponsorship works

Philip Hands — 2013-05-15T10:29:41


Very true, and that would be the main reason not to do it that way.  It
would be very easy to spend the time available sodding about with a
system for combining votes without ever getting round to giving out the
money.

...

Not really.

The only reason I posted was that Moray appeared to be sifting over the
corpse of one of my old suggestions, and seemed to have missed the point
that I was trying to get across at the time.

So perhaps I was dredging up assumptions I had a few years ago, but I
was mostly starting from the concern that it might seem unfair or simply
opaque to those not involved, and pondering ways to make it so that it
would be easy to see that the process had been designed to be
transparently fair.

If the team from the last couple of years think that there's now enough
diversity, then that's fine as far as I'm concerned.

Also, given that I've repeatedly demonstrated that I'm incapable of
getting myself organised enough to implement any of my mad ideas, I
should probably shut up and let people get on with their difficult jobs.

I _might_ even have time to help this year.
(I never apply for travel sponsorship)

Cheers, Phil.

Debian Conference 2013 The annual Debian developermeeting

Edu Consult Bold — 2013-05-15T10:01:50

Dear Sir/Ma,

It is my pleasure to Introduce our,Company to you EDU CONSULT BOLD.
 We got to know this Conference on website,

We are well interested on (Debian Conference 2013  The annual Debian
developer meeting)

Which will commence 11. - 18. August 2013, Switzerland    .
It shall therefore be appreciated if you can give us all neccessary
information about the Conference

Your urgent reply  will be highly appreciative

Best regards!

Yours Truly,
Segun igbinoba.
Manager

Re: Rethinking the way travel sponsorship works

Didier 'OdyX' Raboud — 2013-05-15T09:47:54

Hi Philipp,

Le mercredi, 15 mai 2013 10.53:24, Philipp Hug a écrit :

Indeed, thanks for pointing this out. As for the proposal, as mentionned, it's 
only reasonable if we warn the requesters.

Cheers,

OdyX

(P.S. No need to CC me, I'm subscribed.)

Re: Traveling information: Train via Germany use "Europa-Spezial Schweiz"

Daniel Pocock — 2013-05-15T09:00:55

Just out of interest, how much do you pay just for a ticket to the Swiss
border and back?

While there is no detail confirmed about the day trip, people buying
multi-day rail passes would presumably use them to and from the border
and on the day trip as well

The regional pass for "Lake Geneva - Alps" is a typical example but
doesn't stretch to the German border:

http://www.myswitzerland.com/en/regional-pass-lake-geneva-alps-en.html
  (adult, 130 CHF, 7 days)

but for somebody coming from France, assuming that half the price of
that ticket is used for the day trip, and the other half is paying for
arrival/departure, they are paying about 33 CHF each way from the border
to Yverdon.

Re: Rethinking the way travel sponsorship works

Philipp Hug — 2013-05-15T08:53:24

Hi Didier,


You probably misread Gaudenz's email. He was suggesting to publish
only the names without any amount or other details, which is
reasonable IMO.
I agree that we should not publish the amounts as this causes exactly
the problems you mentioned.

Philipp

Re: Rethinking the way travel sponsorship works

Didier 'OdyX' Raboud — 2013-05-15T08:31:54

Hi Gaudenz, hi all,

Le mardi, 14 mai 2013 23.44:06, Gaudenz Steinlin a écrit :

I think that this would be a too big hit on privacy of the beneficiaries of 
travel sponsorship: the "amount-name" relationship is too sensitive to be 
published. Publishing how much the Debian project gave to support who's travel 
IMHO introduces all sort of social biases in unsuspected ways: one's employer, 
partner, friends, family, etc, get to know that "one can't even afford a trip 
to $country", to take a simple example outside Debian. It also helps to game 
the system in future years: "oh, that other DD in my area asked for $amount, I 
can probably get the same even if I don't need it". Even if we try very hard 
to add all sorts of metrics to help the rating, the team is still a set of 
humans applying their common sense on requests that are money-sensitive for 
the affected individuals. That will inevitably lead to having to ''take 
decisions''.

On the other hand, I very much understand the need for transparency: the 
project spends money from sponsors to help contributors' attendance (but 
that's equally true for accomodation or food sponsorship). We need to be able 
to publicly describe how the travel sponsorship money was spent. I therefore 
propose to either publish a sorted list of anonymised amounts, such as [0]:

  ^ Amount ^ Country of departure ^ Project status (DD/DM/…) ^

or publish a alphabetically sorted list of beneficiaries' names, aka "the 
persons from that list got part of their travel expenses sponsored" [1]. In 
any case, if the names are to be published, we must tell the requesters before 
starting the rating process.


As I tried to explain above, publishing only part of the output (the full 
output would have each of the raters' scores and also the list of people that 
didn't get the sponsorship) of the team's work will IMHO increase the 
frustration instead of getting the benefit of that "basic oversight".

We can't reach full transparency because there _will_ always be special cases 
that lead to a team decision. I think it's better for all parties to setup a 
team that is empowered to take these decisions in a discretionary manner 
instead of imposing transparency of the granted amounts.

Cheers,

OdyX

[0] Of course the third column can help un-anonymising some entries.
[1] The full list with names should be accessible to DPL and auditors, but not
    to the wide public or the (less-)wide DD population IMHO.
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Re: DC12 Travel Bursaries ("Herb Team"): Ping?Discussion?

Gaudenz Steinlin — 2013-05-15T07:36:05


I'm willing to serve on the team again this year under whatever scheme
we decide. But if you find enough people for the team, I'm happy to step
back and concentrate on other things. I'd actually even prefer to be
able to step back ;-)

Gaudenz

Re: Cloud Track

2013-05-14T21:10:24

Hello again Gunnar,

Thanks for the continued correspondence.  It appears I need to get my email
address added to this list as I keep getting mod emails too :-)

I tried to edit the Wiki but it required an account there that I do not
currently have.  I applied for one and will update it as soon as it is
activated.

As for the talks, I'm happy to help wherever, but I have also submitted a
talk myself and don't want any sort of conflict of interest to arise or
even have the appearance of preferential treatment being at play.

I'm looking forward to hearing back when all the details are sorted out.

Thanks!

-Brian

Re: Rethinking the way travel sponsorship works

Gunnar Wolf — 2013-05-15T04:13:50

Gaudenz Steinlin dijo [Tue, May 14, 2013 at 11:44:06PM +0200]:

Thanks for motivating me to *do* things instead of just proposing them
;-)

I have just done that: Mailed debian-devel-announce with a call for
help for joining this Excellent Team! I hope to have some new recruits
(and new viewponts) soon.

Re: Rethinking the way travel sponsorship works

Gaudenz Steinlin — 2013-05-14T21:44:06

Hi

Philip Hands <phil< at >hands.com> writes:


IMHO the travel sponsorship rating process should stay as lightweight as
it is now. The process you propose just makes things much more
heavyweight. I'm quite convinced that the process will always be fuzzy
in some parts and the problem should not be solved by just mathematicaly
combining as many ratings as possible.

I also think that instead of selecting people that did not really
volunteer to do the job, we will get better results if the rating is
done by people that are ready to invest a significant amount of time.
This makes it less likely that rating is mostly done on popularity.

I agree that a diverse team of raters is important. And I also think
that we should avoid the case were the raters just self-nominate among
the core debconf-team. To avoid this we could launch a broder call for
help with rating to debian-devel-announce or debian-project where we
describe the task, teh requirements, the time investment it needs and
ask people to nominate themself.

I'm also not sure if we would be solving the right problem with this
process. Your underlying assumption seems to be that the current rating
system is not fair. After serving on the team last year I don't think
that unfairness or bias of the raters was a big problem. The team
already consisted of very different views and raters applied quite
different criteria. I have no knowledge about other years though.

To me the biggest problems last year were:
- Very different amount of information provided by the applicants. Some
  provided quite detailed reasoning while others just wrote 1-2
  sentences and only focused on parts of what I considered important for
  my decision.
- Unclear rating criteria. The rating was done on two scales (amount
  requested and benefit/involvement to Debian), but the team did not
  have a clear view what each of these scales mean. This is not a
  problem per se if all possible views are evenly represented in the
  rating team (and this was mostly the case), but it made it quite
  difficult for me to make my own ratings consistent.

Making the whle process fully public was already rejected in previous
discussions. I agree that this might be too much. But to balance
accountability towards the project with the need for privacy for those
requesting sponsorship I think we could at least announce the list of
persons who were granted travel sponsorship (without amounts). This
would allow for at least basic oversight of the process by outsiders.

Gaudenz

Re: DC12 Travel Bursaries ("Herb Team"): Ping?Discussion?

Luca Capello — 2013-05-14T21:05:41

Hi there,

Thank you for the email.

On Tue, 14 May 2013 01:09:14 +0200, Gunnar Wolf wrote:

Unfortunately, given how my time has been lately eaten I do think that
stepping back from the herb team should help me concentrating on other
DebConf13 aspects.

Thx, bye,
Gismo / Luca

Re: Traveling information: Train via Germany use"Europa-Spezial Schweiz"

Gaudenz Steinlin — 2013-05-14T20:50:31


You can either add country specific sections to the existing wiki page
about travel[1], or create a new page and link it from the existing
page. IMO this info should be in the wiki and it's best if those
actually researching the options also add the info. This ensures that
it's as correct as possible.

Gaudenz

[0] https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf13/Travel

DebConf12 final report 1.0

Didier 'OdyX' Raboud — 2013-05-14T20:35:04

Hi all,

I have just uploaded to media.debconf.org what can be considered as the 
DebConf12 final report 1.0 version:

http://media.debconf.org/dc12/documents/DebConf12_FinalReport.pdf

As for its actual announcement, I was thinking of doing:
- DebConf blogpost in debconf12 category
- debconf-announce, debian-devel-announce
- Debian News (press< at > CC'ed)

I will work on the announcement text tomorrow morning on [0] but I would be 
very happy to have it actually sent by a DebConf12'er; any taker ?

Cheers,

OdyX

[0] http://piratepad.net/debconf12-final-report-announcement

Re: DC12 Travel Bursaries ("Herb Team"): Ping? Discussion?

Steve Langasek — 2013-05-14T18:24:26


I feel compelled to point out here that in the discussions around sponsored
accomodations, the compromise that was arrived at was to gather data as part
of registration about whether those who we want to sponsor would accept
communal accomodation.  In order to get an unbiased answer to this question,
the accomodation preferences of those who have requested sponsorship *must
not* be part of the information available to the herb team; the rankings of
the herb team must not be influenced (subconsciously or otherwise) by the
sponsoree's willingness to accept communal accomodations, but must instead
be based on a straightforward assessment of the sponsoree's contribution to
the conference.

This does not preclude either Philipp or Giacomo from being part of the Herb
team per se, and my comments are not targeted at them personally.  But it
does mean that the Herb team's decision-making process should be kept at
arm's length from the registration team to avoid contamination.