Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

Last year we had a budget to sponsor key people to the Maemo Summit (travel and accommodation) and this year we will do the same.

But can we do it in a better way? Last time I was the one and only benevolent dictator, the whole process was quite time consuming, many participants had to pay in advance with their credit cards and then get reimbursed many weeks after.

Some ideas:

- Clear criteria to be invited: speakers, core volunteers in the organization, what else?

- The decision of inviting community members is made by community members (who?)

- An external travel agency takes care of travel arrangements, as we did in the Danish Weekend.

- We book a number of rooms in the same place and we pay in a single go as group reservation (as done with the Tracker Hackfest last year and in the Danish Weekend too).

This system requires that the list of approved sponsored participants is known quite in advanced. It is also tied to the approval of sessions/speakers.

Perhaps we spend 50-80% of the budget this way and we look for more ad-hoc decisons and more manual handling of expenses after that, to have some flexibility closer to October?

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

Seems sensible on the face of it.

I think it'll be interesting prep for if there's a discount programme for the next device; and whether there's any animosity over the selected candidates getting sponsorship; and the selection mechanism.

Question on a single block booking for accomodation would be the quality of the rooms and the potential number of rooms needed limiting the options quite significantly.

Selecting which "general" community members go could be something like:

1. Top n karma holders
2. Top m tmo posters
3. Top o tmo thanks count (or ratio?)
4. One slot for a "caption" competition winner on tmo: "I'd like to go to the Maemo Summit because...". Judged by the council.

There's a lot of overlap in those groups with speakers & core community volunteers anyway.

Also, what about some members of the upstream communities? Sponsorship seems like a good way of saying "thank you" and potentially getting them more involved in Maemo as a developer; rather than just an upstream provider.

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

+1, very good idea.

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

I really like the idea of booking lots of rooms at an inexpensive hotel.
The ideal would be a bunch of small rooms with one or two beds (for the grumpy old folks), and a few big rooms with hostel-style bunks (for the 20-somethings).

I can only speak for myself, but I suspect I'm speaking for many more when I say this: it doesn't have to be the Ritz, but I don't want to walk down a public hallway to have a shower and I don't want to sleep in a room with 6 other guys. On the other hand, I could probably share a room with someone (I've gotten to know a few of the other community members now).

(EDIT: Oh, and the hotel should have Wi-Fi :D )

There's got to be some reasonable places that meet those criteria. And they should have rooms available in October.

I also think getting sponsorship worked out as soon as possible is good for everyone. It keeps costs down, lets people plan and arrange their schedule, and gives everyone a chance to apply.

The other question I have is: some people will be flying from other continents for this. Is it really only going to be two or three days long? Is there any way to connect this with another event to make the long flights more "worth it"?

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

I second Qole's suggestion. Something like the Generator hostel I stayed at in Berlin would be fine. I'd prefer booking somewhere recommended by the Summit organizers, knowing it will conveniently close by and used by fellow summiteers, rather than trying to divine one through Internet invocations myself in a city I don't know :-)

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

Rooms in one hotel = good. (If possible.) Otherwise, maybe in the same block location?

Tim

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

I thought the 'budget' type idea was good last year. You find your own accommodation but you only have x to spend, go over it and you pay the difference. That way if people want to stay in a particular place and its within budget there is nothing stopping them.

Takes the accommodation headache away from Nokia and puts in with the individual being sponsored.

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

I'd like to see the council have a big say in who goes. We did elect them as representation for ourselves as a community so its only fitting that they are heavily involved in deciding who should be sponsored from the community.

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

Probably the two options is the best suit here. Booking a lot of rooms in a particular hotel will probably reduce the price of each room and also" takes the accommodation headache away from" the participants :)

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

For reference, there is an existing Wiki page for this - I'm tracking the main ideas to come out of the thread there, it would be nice to try & crystalise & answer some of the open questions: http://wiki.maemo.org/Maemo_Summit_2...onsored_travel

The questions I raised were:

• Procedure for attendees to ask for sponsorship
• What is the total travel budget?
• Who will authorise travel requests?
• When and how will reimbursements be handled?
• What criteria will be used to decide who gets travel authorised?

Seems like we already have some decent answers for some of those questions.

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 ?

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.

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

I'm fine with GSOC students, in fact I would love to hear the internals of the process from their point of view but to sponsor 10 of them would put a significant strain on the budget I would of thought.

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

Short version: We have a pie, and we have to use the pie to ensure that as many important contributors as possible are there. There will be some cut & dried cases. There will be some cases where we are in a grey area. And there will be some definite "no"s. Metrics might help in the grey areas, but in the end it will come down to who you want there, X or Y?

I agree with Quim, no more than 2 to 3 people, but with transparency in the decision making process and results, is the best way to do it.

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

I also think that asking people if they would be able to attend if we paid part of their expenses would be useful.

Dave.

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

New plan, based on comments from people and the assumption that the maemo.org gang-of-four will expense Nokia directly rather than coming out of the sponsorship budget. Figures in brackets are expected number from that slot, and total so far:

1. Anyone speaking in a "proper" session (~30/30)
2. The current (at the time) community council (5/35)
3. 5 Mer slots for Stskeeps and anyone else he wants (5/40)
4. 10-20 slots for arbitrary decisions decided by the council: community bloggers, GSoC students, cool Fremantle developments, upstream community members (~15/55)
5. Top 5 current OS app authors (i.e. currently diablo; personally I hope it'll be fremantle by the time of the summit!) on downloads.maemo.org based on downloads & rankings (5/60)
6. Anyone in the top 25 of karma. (~15/75)
7. Top 5 people on tmo on thanks/posts ratio, where posts > 300 (~4/79)
8. Anyone in the top 50 of karma coming from outside of the EU (~15/94).
9. Any previous council members (~7/101).
10. Anyone speaking in two or more lightning sessions (~4/105).
11. Any remaining, based on karma.

So that allocation is looking at about twice as many potential sponsors than last year.

There's a lot of overlap in the groups, hence the lower figures for the expected number of people in each group. For example, someone like yerga might be giving a talk; has a lot of karma; has some highly downloaded apps; may stand in the next council elections and win. That wouldn't mean that we go to the next highest app author automatically.

Two questions:

1. Is the prioritisation roughly right? (ignoring whether it needs to be judgment based or just different numbers)
2. Should it pretty much all be merit based after the first item on that list? Or should things just be jiggled around/slots & expectations changed?

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

> Anyone speaking in a "proper" session
(...)
> Anyone speaking in two or more lightning sessions

In reality, a speaker can or cannot afford to travel to Amsterdam, no matter whether is to talk 5 minutes one time, two times, half an hour or two hours.

I think someone doing a lightning talk should be able to request sponsorship and get it, either because is a good speaker with an interesting topic (this should be the criteria to approve any session anyway) or because accomplishes one of the other criteria (top 50 karma etc) or both.

In practice: the content committee needs to look carefully what lightning talks get approved, specially when they come from someone "unknown" in the community or difficult to evaluate based on e.g. other presentations elsewhere.

Don't get me wrong. I'm overall happy on the selection of lightning talks and corresponding sponsored participants last year. But now I think that it was too easy to submit a proposal, get the corresponding sponsorship, deliver the 5 minutes and enjoy the weekend in Berlin. Maybe someone is tempted to exploit this "weakness" this year.

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

I think you're arguing that if someone has a half-hour talk accepted, but doesn't fulfill the other criteria; they'll only get sponsorship if they pass the entirely subjective test.

If so, I disagree. If someone's willing to give a presentation to a large audience to the benefit of the community (having passed some bar to get past the content committee triumverate) the least that they can be offered is sponsorship.

I don't disagree.

Don't disagree here, either. Hence the "2 lightning spots" requirement. Perhaps that should be higher. Or dropped altogether. Giving a lightning presentation doesn't require the preparedness of a full-blown talk (and neither should it, that's the point). Perhaps someone who's only giving lightning sessions should only get sponsorship under the other criteria (including the subjective one).

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

Does anyone disagree with the premise of my prioritisation (whether it's a series of rules applied or the guidelines which subjective judges use as a starting point)?

Is there a concrete alternative proposal other than "some people should review them all and pick which ones they want"?

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

You have identified the 'for sures' - people giving sunstantial presentations; the Maemo related people (Mer, GSoC, upstream contributors, etc); and then a pool of people whose sponsorship is dependant on their contributions to the community. Seems like a fair way to proceed to me. There can be some grey areas in the last pool - the community people. But that area will always be grey at best.

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

Agree, the content committee will take this into account for sure.

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

IMO your rules are pretty sane, but I also agree with the majority of Quim's thoughts, and also it will not be that hard to select ~80% of the sponsored participants. For the others a case by case evaluation following the proposed guidelines is needed.