Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

There is no headache taken away from the organizers, since later they need to face dozens of individual expense claims instead of a couple of payments to a hotel/hostel and a travel agent.

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

And I speak from personal experience when I say that getting expenses reimbursed from a company 7500 km away from your home bank, and who doesn't speak your language, and doesn't know your banking codes is a terrible pain for everyone.

Having a single bill (in a single currency) for 50 participants from all over the world is great for Nokia, and great for the participants too.

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

Hi,

I suggest to give the possibility to invited people to book at least the flight by them selves.

For this reason: last year the agency proposed me a flight that costed about 450€. I was able to book flight by myself and I payed it only 150€.

With all this money you save, more people can be sponsored.

About the hotel well... I agree with you. I think that if the agency book more rooms we can have a better discount.

The important thing is that sponsored people organize in group of 2 or 3 people to save more money. One single room usually costs more compared to 2-3 people sharing a room with 3 single beds.

What do you think about?

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

I'm getting questions from people willing to be sponsored and I'm answering that this year it's not me who decides.

So, who decides? Baloo suggests the council. I'm fine with that and I would be also fine with any alternative the council would decide. Please, make a decision.

In the meantime, I have an initial proposal for the budget available to cover sponsored participants travel and accommodation. I need to agree it with Peter (back from holidays next week).

If you decide Who Approves this week and we approve How Much next week, then we can agree on the details, find the travel agent & hotel and start booking.

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

Ok, so we're in the hands of the Council :)
Let's wait their decision about how to organize this aspect of Summit.

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

Initial proposal, depending on budget and so on; probably in order of priority:

1. Anyone speaking in a "proper" session.
2. Anyone with karma > 555 coming from outside the EU.
3. 5 Mer slots for Stskeeps and anyone else he wants.
4. The current (at the time) community council, and the maemo.org gang-of-four.
5. The top 10 people on tmo on thanks:posts ratio, where posts > 300.
6. The top 10 app authors, based on downloads.
7. Anyone with karma > 375.
8. Any previous council members.
9. Anyone speaking in two or more lightning sessions.
10. Any remaining, based on karma.

It is expected that any Nokia employees attending as part of their job will be paid for out of a separate budget. Any other Nokia attendees can be processed as above.

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

Not bad. What about

- Community upstream contributors. I guess the best way for them is to have a proper session approved (e.g. "Make the best of telepathy-haze and Maemo")

- Popular bloggers. I assume the media relations is in Nokia's field but the border with individual bloggers isn't always clear.

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

A technical related issue:

What should we do with registrations when sponsorship is denied. Should the registration automatically be removed? I could add some explanation to the default rejection mail that they should re-register when they want to come anyway.

If we don't delete the registrations, we might end up with a lot of registrations for people who can't come?

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

Not bad for a Monday morning, anyway :-)

Perhaps there should be a penultimate block of 20 (say) decided arbitrarily by the council? How many people were sponsored last year?

This block of 20 could include popular bloggers - the obvious one, Thoughtfix, already falls into the karma-based categories, however. EIPI doesn't. Any other "prominent bloggers" you're thinking of?

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

- GSoC students ?