20:01:39 #startmeeting 20:01:39 Meeting started Thu Jan 8 20:01:39 2015 UTC. The chair is bremner. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot. 20:01:39 Useful Commands: #action #agreed #help #info #idea #link #topic. 20:01:49 #topic rollcall 20:02:07 ciao 20:02:14 bremner, cate: I think that could be the realm of the boursaries, maybe with a consultation with the wider team, but still in the scope of the boursaries 20:02:21 I'm here, mostly in an observing role - bursaries fall under PA, so I need to know about stuff, but plan to mostly take a hands-off approach. 20:02:26 sorry, now I am out of topic :) 20:02:35 hi 20:03:25 Tincho: in past there was special debian fund, so special rules. Than it could be decided by the same team, but let try to use extra non-debconf funds for such things, as in (some) past debconf 20:03:52 ok, I guess we'll move on to actual agenda, and late latecomers interrupt randomly as per tradition. 20:03:57 here, thought not part of bursary 20:04:06 #topic scope of meeting 20:04:14 RichiH: there is still no bursary team 20:04:45 So, sorry Tinch, but I want to keep the topic to the ranking process. We have had a hard time with that in the past. 20:05:27 In particular, I think/hope we will have some other pools with different rules, but these rules are for "regular" applicants. 20:06:00 are people OK with that? and OK with forging ahead before we really have a bursaries team? 20:06:09 bremner: sure 20:06:42 yes 20:08:06 bremner: regarding the last question, in the design of the new teams it was intended that some rules would be defined independently of the actual bursaries team 20:08:36 Tincho: right. That's why I think it's actually good that anybody who's interested helps make these rules. 20:09:27 #info this meeting is just about ranking applicants who are "debian contributors", broadly defined. 20:10:18 #topic categories that contribute to ranking 20:10:56 comments? 20:11:21 bremner: I'd say yes to all the points in the wiki 20:11:28 Tincho +1 20:11:32 s/points/categories/ 20:11:37 I don't like the amount requested 20:11:46 I think it should be independent 20:12:03 I interpret amount requested as reasonable amount 20:12:04 or we sponsor only the most near people 20:12:07 ok, let's discuss that. Anybody like to defend "amount requested"? 20:12:15 depending on where you're travelling 20:12:34 you also have the ratio requested/real cost 20:12:44 ana: in past there are some discussion if more sponsored people is better (small ammounts) 20:13:12 e.g sompebody asking 400 EUR to go Germany from Spain is probably overstimating 20:13:36 ana: do you think it's better to have that in the ranking, or as a seperate step? 20:13:39 on the other side, we can just offer less sponsorship if the person doesn't have a good justification and do not keep this into account 20:13:54 bremner: separate step 20:14:19 s/keep/take/ 20:14:54 you could also cap the sponsoring... there are so many ways of doing this... 20:14:56 I can see either way. From a logistics point of view, it feels better to sponsor more people. 20:15:28 in previous years, I have seen people from the same country asking very different amounts 20:15:43 need to leave brb 20:16:28 we can't compare finantial need, or past/potential contributions, but we definitively can compare prices of people travelling from country X to country Y 20:17:15 ana: sure. But it seems easy to say sorry, we're only offering EUR100 to get from germany to spain. 20:17:33 ana: assuming the country is far enough away that the size of the contry is small compared to the distance. 20:17:45 I think the question is do we want to tilt towards people from closer places. 20:17:54 or at least that's my question. 20:17:59 hard on people from asia. 20:18:47 #info amount requested penalizes people from far away 20:18:57 bremner: northern or southern Germany can almost double or half the distance needed to get to Spain. 20:19:05 bremner: ah ok. I didn't understand it that way. 20:19:06 feel free to #info, otherwise the minutes will be empty. 20:19:34 ana: so you are thinking reasonableness of request? 20:19:59 bremner: yes, exactly 20:20:34 BTW do we know how much budget do you have? It could effect the discussion 20:20:35 do others also agree that this could be a seperate sanity check / amount limiting step? 20:20:46 noshadow: which part of Spain? ;) Seriously, I remember insane requests when dc9 20:21:02 cate: we are making general rules for future years, or at least trying to. 20:21:25 bremner: ok 20:21:35 cate: it's my personal aim to have the budget finished by the time bursaries start working 20:22:00 (although I really don't think we should overcommit) 20:22:22 bremner: I would settle this as asking people to explain when they seem to be more expensive than others "nearby" and do not penalize for this 20:22:23 madduck: nattie I have ideas about that for the next dc-team meeting. 20:22:41 ana: that was the informal practice last year. 20:23:16 about prioritizing people living closer to the confernce over those overseas, I wouldn't do it, or debconf would become a local-ish event every year. We already have minidebconfs for that 20:23:29 ok. 20:23:37 bremner: glad to read that, it didn't fully happen in the years in was in the committee! 20:23:40 ana: Barcelona for example. Only arguing that "same country" might not be a good approximation for "nearby". 20:23:43 in -> I 20:24:43 #agreed Amount requested to be considered as a seperate step / consultation / sanity check 20:25:59 hrm. Is MeetBot dead? 20:26:24 MeetBot: #agreed Amount requested to be considered as a seperate step / consultation / sanity check 20:26:24 bremner: Error: "#agreed" is not a valid command. 20:26:33 no, it never acks those things; stupid, I know. 20:26:40 ok. 20:26:48 MeetBot: you suck in this regard. 20:26:48 madduck: Error: "you" is not a valid command. 20:27:24 so that leaves us with three categories. Any further objections / discussion? 20:27:41 or other categories? 20:27:58 no, I agree the other cat 20:28:05 mraw ;). 20:29:35 #agreed the other 3 categories as listed in the agenda are OK, and sufficient 20:29:59 "Past outcomes from Debconf partipation / Plan for this year" is most about DebCamp and travel? Or also attendee should give the plan? 20:30:17 excellent segue to next topic 20:30:20 but this probably is a detail we can skip[ 20:30:28 #topic what information should we collect 20:31:43 bremner: your previous agreed did not work 20:32:04 Tincho: which one? any of them? 20:32:15 [20:28:54] [21:26:35] MeetBot: #agreed Amount requested to be considered as a seperate step / consultation / sanity check 20:32:16 [20:28:54] [21:26:35] bremner: Error: "#agreed" is not a valid command 20:32:32 also the last one 20:32:35 Tincho: that was my second try, with the nick prefix 20:32:40 but we didn't get the error yet 20:32:46 agree != agreed 20:32:54 argh. software sucks. 20:32:57 darst: MeetBot is very slow 20:33:33 bremner: it does 20:33:57 well, I have logs in the worst case. 20:34:08 let's carry on and pretend the bot is working. 20:34:11 not all commands produce output, in particular #agreed shouldn't make any output 20:34:34 later we can discuss making darst repeat HCI 101 ;) 20:34:39 my word, it's darst! 20:35:16 ok, so is it reasonable to ask people asking for food and accomodation to fill in the same 3 boxes? 20:36:13 not IMO 20:36:16 bremner: I am not sure 20:36:30 i mean, food and accommodation are a separate matter from travel bursaries 20:36:44 well, we only want to do one ranking, right? 20:37:05 it depends on how we take board sponsorship... is it a special privilege, or it continues to something that is given to most DCs 20:37:14 bremner: and DebCamp. DebCamp is separate, and requires more plan to get sponsorship [and possibly a limit on places] 20:37:15 (debian contributors) 20:37:37 bremner: I think this depends on the criteria for food/accom and travel; i.e. when (like in the past) everyone-involved gets food+accom but only a bunch get travel sponsorship, I don't think it's reasonable to ask the same questions 20:37:53 nattie: the idea, i think, is to have boursaries also allocating board sponsorship 20:37:53 (ok, Tincho put it shorter :)) 20:37:59 yeah. I guess that's the discussion we're having. 20:38:26 cate: re debcamp, that is another discussion to have, too 20:38:29 yes, true. however, it's a lot harder to estimate cost of food as a non-organiser 20:38:48 nattie: you ask the local liaison for that :) 20:39:07 one argument, for the sake of balance, is that people with a weak contribution record (e.g. newb's) might want to say something about plans. We could make it optional? 20:39:45 we found out that quite a few people don't necessarily want to eat on-campus all the time 20:39:50 to ask a hard question, what about financial need and board sponsorship? 20:40:35 what is the question? 20:40:59 should we ask people to explain why they cannot pay for their own food and housing. 20:41:25 bremner: I think it depends on the answer to my previous q 20:41:30 I think we should continue as the past: we thanks the active contributors with boards 20:41:56 I guess the default is not to make a radical change. 20:42:55 how about this: for board, tell people to look at contributors.debian.org, and if that is representative, leave the boxes blank. Otherwise fill in as many as they want. 20:43:14 I totally agree. I like that we document more the process: more transparent, but I like how it was done on past year (OTOH I was not in the team, so I don't know if there were problems on allocating money/desicions/.. 20:43:35 cate: how was it done? 20:43:40 bremner: I like that idea 20:43:51 Tincho: about what? 20:44:14 cate: you said you liked how it was done last year 20:44:17 bremner: does this mean: "policy for food/accom is: everyone gets it if they are contributors"? if yes, I'd suggest to spell it out clearly 20:44:42 Tincho: the rules, etc. 20:44:47 gregoa: good point. 20:44:59 any objections to formalizing our current practice? 20:45:17 no 20:45:26 bremner: I think it is a requirement at this point :) 20:45:37 (formalising) 20:45:50 yes, I mean gregoa's point specifically ;). 20:45:57 ah, +1 then 20:47:38 #agreed subject to budget constraints, food/accomodation sponsorship will be provided to all debian contributors 20:48:41 ok, that's the big picture. How about the fine print of how we check who is a contributor, and what it says on the web form? 20:48:57 I think that should be spelled out too 20:49:09 agreed 20:50:04 spelled out contributor TO DEBIAN 20:50:20 we had some upstreams asking sponsorship in past IIRC 20:50:23 cate: debian contributor to DEBIAN ;) ? 20:51:05 bremner: you see, you can contribute indirectly to debian. Ask nattie to translate my through 20:51:19 contributing directly to Debian? 20:51:45 contributing directly to Debian regularly? 20:51:46 cate: OK. What do you think of my idea of pointing people to contributors.debian.org and asking them to supplement that as needed? 20:52:03 * nattie stands by as cate's official translator 20:52:07 ah, right. recent and regular are two interesting words here. 20:52:42 bremner: ok 20:52:58 useful in preventing people from either trying to pull historical rank or hastily contributing something just for exposure? 20:54:06 brb. feel free to solve all problems. 20:54:48 nattie: there is no ranking problem. contributor or not: board or not. 20:54:49 yay problem solving! 20:55:26 hi, voltage! 20:55:41 danger, danger! 20:55:44 :D 20:55:49 (you knew i'd say that) 20:56:05 need to get food, sorry. solve all the worlds problems for me :) 20:56:06 so, how strict should we be about this wording? 20:56:23 ok. so, everyone boards with Tincho. and RMS. 20:56:59 Let me interrupt, the current quiet discussion with 20:57:14 #topic digression: when should we stop? 20:57:28 I can handle another 30 minutes. 20:57:34 bremner: when you will be the last one to write 20:58:04 I think we are near to the end 20:58:26 ok, let's try to at least agree on the board stuff. 21:01:39 So my proposal, given it might just be me and cate at this point, is that we finish up the current discussion on food/board, and then try to set another meeting. 21:02:00 i'm still watching 21:02:30 * gregoa as well, at least with one eye 21:02:35 hurray. 21:02:51 #topic food/board bursaries (what information to collect) 21:03:20 * ana here too 21:04:03 are we still at "regular" and "recent" contributions to DEBIAN? 21:04:23 I guess so. How strict, and how detailed do we need to be? 21:04:48 have we ever denied someone food/accomodation sponsorship because they haven't contributed lately? 21:05:21 I think this should be decided by the team: they will handle such information, so thay should know how much they need 21:06:34 cate: I guess I meant, how detailed to we need to be in describing "what is a debian contributor". Is that what you meant? 21:07:00 bremner: no, on DC12 only few people who forgot to notify us the non-arrival 21:07:39 bremner: ah. I would leave much generic 21:08:28 I'd also leave it to the team to decide on rare corner cases 21:08:53 one hopes that people would assess their own contributions honestly 21:11:12 #agreed information collected for board/food: contributors.debian.org, plus optional free form text from applicant in one or more of the standard 3 boxes 21:12:41 #topic what can/should we ask people about financial need 21:13:42 probably we need more time/energy/people to discuss this, but is there something we can agree on now? 21:13:54 bremner: for board sponsoring: nothing, as per above policy; for travel sponsorship: depends on the policy there :) 21:14:19 #info this topic is defacto just about travel sponsorship 21:14:22 I would write more in detail about that, but anyway we cannot verify, and it is most personal the "need" 21:15:09 I'm missing to know how travel sponsorship has been done in the last 2-3 years, it would be helpful as initial point for the discussion 21:17:32 we asked about this a bit indirectly, I think. 21:18:18 I can dig a bit. 21:18:32 and the question was not clear. I think we found later that people interpreted differently the "need" 21:19:58 yeah, I think that's part of the motivation for what we are doing. 21:20:22 ana: last year we just gave one subjective score to each applicant. 21:23:25 so, what's the meaning of this "need" thingie? is the "the amount I'm asking for" or "the amount below which I can't buy a ticket" or some ratio of the bank account or something else? 21:24:37 ana: so to summarize: was asked a fuzzy question about need, and then either gave it a number seperately, or used it as part of making up some number. 21:25:45 or put differently: what is it that the team wants to find out (independent of the used terms)? 21:26:27 gregoa: somehow we breezed through "Financial need" is a category, with out knowing what it was ;). 21:27:05 I guess we as a community have some vague idea that lack of personal money should not keep "deserving" people from attending debconf? 21:27:06 bremner: seems like my gut feeling is not completely off :) 21:28:06 I think the vague idea is a good starting point 21:30:06 so, is the point to find out how much many is missing in order to be able to attend debconf? 21:30:33 as a thought experiment, if the same person applied in two different years, same activities, but was unemployed one year, should we rank them higher the year they are unemployed? 21:30:42 s/many/money/ # don't read german while typing english 21:31:25 gregoa: I'm not sure. Even that question is pretty hard, because people don't agree on what "missing" is. 21:31:39 e.g. that money is already committed to holidays with my family 21:31:54 oh yes, I agree that's hard 21:33:21 re your thought experiment: is it about ranking or about acknowledging different amounts of money and accepting/denying the request? 21:33:51 gregoa: about ranking. Because we seemed to think financial need should be part of ranking. 21:35:11 bremner: hm ... "financial need" as in the fact of lack of money? or as in the amount requested? - the latter would sound a bit weird for ranking 21:35:57 and the former seems like a non-criterion (why would someone apply otherwise?) or not quantifiable? [in $currencyunit] 21:36:21 (sorry if this confuses more, I'm just thinking out loud) 21:37:53 It's a confusing topic. Some people apply because they feel their contributions to debian entitle them to travel sponsorship more or less independantly of financial need. 21:38:56 right. so this is a question of policy as well, I guess? "travel sponsorship is for enabling contributors to participate who couldn't afford it without"? 21:40:14 I think we are trying to find a balance, but yes, the current topic is to favour applicants who could not participate without it. 21:41:05 dunno. We could adopt such a policy, although it pretty much pushes the problem into "couldn't afford it". 21:41:52 IMO defining the methods is easier if at least the objectives are clear :) 21:42:42 what about applicants who wouldn't participate without it because it's hard to justify it to the family? 21:43:13 sure. or just "because reasons" 21:43:18 but yeah, "what does 'can\'t afford' mean?" is still a problem … 21:43:54 * gregoa likes "because reasons" 21:48:04 this is basically how we ended up with a vague question. But I don't think that it's really working. 21:50:47 and do we stop the meeting now? 21:50:54 probably for the best 21:51:02 it's gone on for nearly 2 hours now 21:51:04 bremner: because of participants' confusion or because of "what do we do with the answers?" I think the former can be improved 21:51:05 Yes, I think so. I've been trying to formulate something for the minutes. 21:51:27 * gregoa nods, takes probably more time to think about it 21:51:53 #info we need more time to think about this. 21:52:38 #info issues include financial stress, justification to family 21:53:13 Should we meet again in two or 3 weeks? 21:53:32 for some version of we. 21:53:45 bremner: yes 21:53:52 with more discussion beforehand? 21:54:04 when do you need to form the team? I think we have still time 21:54:17 hmm 21:54:23 we do have time, but maybe a call for volunteers. 21:54:42 but for the question for registration system, I think we need some answer soon (in 3 week should be still ok) 21:54:49 maybe a meeting after FOSDEM (31st jan/1st feb) 21:55:50 the week after fosdem is not good for me. 21:56:22 @FOSDEM? 21:56:27 who's coming? 21:56:30 me! 21:56:33 cate: are you finally coming to fosdem? 21:56:56 nattie: I was thinking you will kill me if I don't arrive 21:57:03 cate: good shadow :) 21:57:25 * gregoa also thought about an informal chat at fosdem 21:57:33 ok, let's plan on meeting at fosdem, at least 4 of us are there. 21:57:46 that can then feed the next irc meeting 21:58:05 #agreed some interested people to meet in person at fosdem to discuss further 21:58:10 #endmeeting