<snipped> Warning - would be a bit long.
Dear Manas, There is nothing to be sorry about as Tiago shared. It is a recurring issue as Tiago pointed out. Also sorry, if my reply came out rude, that was not my intention if it came out that way. It's just the number of applications versus number of people who can go through them. >From what little I was able to glimpse/figure out the applicant/busary team is probably in the range of 50:1 or more which is quite a bit. This is on the basis of couple of years estimate of applications and rough number of people who may have gone through the application. The only outlier I know might be Germany where 550 people were given bursaries. I honestly would like to know how many applications were there and how many people were scrutinizing the applications and how much time it took to complete the process. That probably would have been a nightmarish job. While I suspect that the people who go through bursary applications may be using some of the techniques used by an Embassy official to figure out whether s(he) should give you/me a visa , still it would be quite a bit of work. Unfortunately, the embassy people have much more resources and many ways to get info. about you then the bursary team. And even then you have to wonder why it takes the visa people one month or more to give you a visa or deny (especially when you are paying for it and they are paid quite a bit more than the average person in most establishments.) Add to that the bursary team may ask for clarifications just to make sure that anybody who by mistake didn't complete a form or didn't answer a question/query is asked to make sure that deserving applications are given enough of a chance. ' The only way for bursaries to complete on time in all fairness is if they close about 4 months before the conference or alternately have double or triple the number of people who are able to evaluate bursary requests so attendees have the possibility of getting cheap tickets, get the visa and do whatever formalities needed to be completed. AFAIK, to avoid conflicts of interest situation, if you/I have a bursary request then we cannot evaluate other's requests and that is correct so it often comes down to the pool of people who have the energy, capacity and willingness to shift through lot of content without much obvious to be seen and appreciated over the years. This would be only those people who either - a. are part of the local team. b. have no interest to be part of a Debconf for that specific year and have the time, patience and eyes for doing the job. Also having a series of happy coincidences such as getting sponsors in a month or so and they paying well in time would free up time for other activities, the same could be shared for the other number of things which need to happen before bursaries come in the picture :) I am going to share something which somebody shared in some other context but is probably apt in these conditions - . For you it might be '1' thing that should be done, from the other, you might be the '40'th or even 100th on the list. This we experience everyday in any activity and more so in India where we services are not commensurate to number of people living. I haven't tried to dig how the bursaries team operates but would guess it would take them in the range of a month, month and a half or a bit more to get through the whole process if not more. And as shared , people who are bursaries may have other responsibilities other than just looking at bursary applications . Some of them might be part of the local team so they may also other responsibilities in organizing Debconf apart from their day job, family life and life in general. As a former bursary team Tiago might be able to share some stats. or experiences he might want to share. I would like to document the role of Bursaries team in more detail in https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf/DebConf probably as another page altogether . I have seen scattered info. about the bursaries team but not much in concrete terms of stats. and content which can be shared across the community. I do understand the need to have bursary team members to have privacy but having the process documented might make it easier for others to understand what (if anything) can be made better. -- Regards, Shirish Agarwal शिरीष अग्रवाल My quotes in this email licensed under CC 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ http://flossexperiences.wordpress.com EB80 462B 08E1 A0DE A73A 2C2F 9F3D C7A4 E1C4 D2D8
