Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

Good point. There are 10. Something for the content committee: should any GSoC student attending be expected to give a session on their project? Should there be a single (perhaps a double-session) on GSoC where the process can be discussed, projects can be demoed and students give their thoughts?

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

ITYM anyone in the top 30 & 60 respectively (the actual karma score thresholds will probably have shifted by decision time). Also, I'm not sure the geographical restriction in the first one is a good thing: it would be a shame to lose any of the EU people in the top 30 if they can't afford the trip.

(Disclaimer: not applying for sponsorship so no vested interest apart from getting the most out of the summit).

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

Certainly if they are sponsored they should give a presentation, but it shouldn't be mandatory if they just turn up (i.e. without sponsorship) (too much pressure if they think that if they come they must stand up and talk!). Then again I'm sure they will all want to give presentations no matter what.

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

Good point.

One could even argue that the top contributors should get sponsored no matter where they are, and it's the lower-level contributors which have to make some effort on their own part outside of the EU?

The thought here though is that the "top 60" would pick up any of the "top 30" inside the EU if we haven't run out of budget. This allows the prioritisation of the budget in the most fair and equitable way to try to ensure that the top contributors outside of the EU get a better chance of getting sponsorship.

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

I counted 51 sponsored from http://maemo.org/news/events/archive...mo_summit-001/

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

Almost perfect :), some suggestions (pointing for 50 sponsored participants):

1. Anyone speaking in a "proper" session.
2. Top 25-40 karma holders (managed according the requests from outside EU) .
3. 3-5 Mer slots for Stskeeps and anyone else he wants (managed according the requests from outside EU).
4. The current (at the time) community council, and the maemo.org gang-of-four.
5. Top app authors, based on downloads & Fremantle stars.
6. Any previous council members.
7. Anyone speaking in two or more lightning sessions.
8. 5-10 slots for community upstream contributors & bloggers & GSoC students
9. Any previous council members.
10. The top 10 people on tmo on thanks: posts ratio, where posts > 300.
11. Any remaining, based on karma.

Also the council should take into account the karma value, IMO karma from applications&bugs is more valuable for the community than karma from tmo posts for e.g.

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

Agree, perhaps a LT for each project, if they want, expecting that we will not have the 10 students presenting :p

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

Another consideration: developers with proven Fremantle interest (e.g. interesting stuff in extras).

Also a consideration on big karma holders currently active, as opposed to those that made merits more than a year ago and since then...

I mean, sponsoring participants is a big chunk of the budget. Such investment should have a direct impact in the success of the Summit (good speakers, inspirational contributors, great promoters, efficient volunteers...) and/or Maemo 5 (great software developers, mainly).

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

True. But things like "interesting" and VDVsx's suggestion of "[top karma people] managing people outside EU" is the time taken to decide each case on its merit.

I'd rather have rules for the majority and then a pot of sponsorship reserved for any outliers: it removes any bias from the system (assuming enough people are happy with the rules); and eases the workload.

I'm still an advocate of decaying karma (the same rationale would apply to any device programme), but there seems to have been little interest in implementing it.

Absolutely. Are we aiming for a similar number to last year (assuming they were statistically significant in terms of travel), a few more, ...?

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

Well... When each decision implies and expense of 300 to 1000 (rough averages for EU and America) you end up looking case by case no matter what. I understood your points as general guidelines, not strict rules to be applied automatically.

Yes, it's a lot of work. I don't recommend to have the whole council or many people in the decision because then the work gets multiplied with not much differences in the end result. 2-3 is ok. I volunteer to be one of them, mostly based on my experience triaging requests in previous events.