Hi, We met last Monday after too long since our last well-attended meeting and with a too much ambitious agenda.
http://meetbot.debian.net/Manual.html#hints-on-how-to-run-an-effective-meeting The meeting ran over for almost an extra full hour and at times certain ideas seemed to gain momentum when indeed they did not have full support, which make the logs very confusing (as many of the 'AGREED' entries were due to the inexperience and agreed-happy finger of the chair). http://meetbot.debian.net/Manual.html#hints-on-how-to-run-an-effective-meeting A summary is of course an imperfect artifact and contains the opinions and views of the summarizer. Please contribute with anything I so chose not to include in this summary. I have written everything I could in passive voice, because I suffer a "rhetorical-testosterone deficit"[1]. http://meetbot.debian.net/Manual.html#hints-on-how-to-run-an-effective-meeting We managed to get ourselves intertwined in never-ending bickering on the following topics: * T-shirts There was plenty of discussion about what to do with role-based t-shirts and people who fall into multiple roles. Initially it was discussed to have only one attendee t-shirt plus one role t-shirt (where roles are orga, v-t, volunteer, etc). Of particular attention was the video team t-shirt, that seems to be used as a "cheap bribe" to get more v-t volunteers. The v-t team people attending stressed the usefulness of having a separate t-shirt. Other people weren't particularly moved, but the v-t team people made their point. The meeting was unable to decide between the max-1 and max-2 options. In the max-1 option, orga/v-t/volunteer will get an orga/v-t/volunteer (or generic 'staff') t-shirt and no attendee t-shirt. In the max-2 option, they will get the extra t-shirt plus the regular attendee option. * Budget The budget.ods file was scrutinized, including recent errors that make some numbers there better than they actually are. The overall numbers looked like $185k on food/accom, expect $74k in attendee fees, have $164k other fundraising/surplus. That's without Queue B and without extra Debian funds. The fundraising/surplus is further split into $74k attendee fees, $75k surplus, $82k fundraising this year, $6k debconf newbies. Later during the meeting Ana produced an adjusted budget.ods with no formal dinner and updated t-shirt numbers that left us with a $5k surplus (rev. 1489). * Budget cuts Conversation then become winding and start discussing possible budget cuts including Formal Dinner and Day Trip. Cutting the formal dinner seemed to be agreed upon. [After the Day Trip funding] Ana brought up the issue of compressing the schedule to the regular university hours to save money in cleaning ( / security?). People thought the idea was doable and it will save money so they (seemed) to go for it. * Day Trip Funding During the budget cuts, Jimmy brought up a proposal for funding the Day Trip with a "package" deal of $20 including discounted subway fare + discounted baseball ticket (which will leave us with some money to sponsor whomever requests it). That didn't seem to pick up steam and they'd prefer costs were truthful and transparent to our attendees. Later on a proposal of not spending DebConf money on the day trip and let the day trip organizers figure it out seemed to reach consensus and it was wrongly noted as agreed. Clint and Micah pointed out it wasn't the case and talked about the value of having as many attendees together during the day trip, a goal strengthen by having it sponsored. The discussion got lengthy and people got very upset, so the moderator tried to conclude the discussion with a vote for preferences over three options (fully funded / funded for whomever requested it / completely unfunded). The vote finished the discussion but it felt silly. * Day Trip in general There were some discussions about the "goodness of fit" of a baseball game given the audience. The local team made the case that the day trip was more than just the baseball game (a day at the beach...) and that baseball games are inherently community-oriented as there's plenty of time to chat during the game. There was plenty of discussion about the total number of potential attendees to the baseball game itself, with guesses ranging from 80 to 200 people. * Bursary and Queue B The meeting concluded with a discussion on travel funding. The main issue discussed was whether we can notify people in the Queue A about their funding situation and whether we can fund Queue A at a different percentage below 100% to free-up money for people in Queue B. Many, many options were proposed (Micah counted up to six). An important subject raised was the fact that after funding the travel queues, DebConf needed some money (between $5k-$10k) to have as a "cushion" for unexpected expenses. The elephant in the room was of course asking Debian for money (represented by Zack in a pachyderm suit), a topic that was avoided till the very end. Nevertheless, at the end of the discussion two proposals stood up: remove sponsored day trip, fund Queue A at 80 % and Queue B at 50%; the second proposal was to ask Debian for ~$7k and then to fund Queue A at 100% and Queue B at 70%. The two proposals were left up for discussion after the meeting. Initially for an emergency meeting but then it was pointed out that funding Queue A at 80% was in the intersection so that was to be acted upon with deciding between these two proposals for the next meeting. Have fun next meeting and don't forget to read http://meetbot.debian.net/Manual.html#hints-on-how-to-run-an-effective-meeting before volunteering for chair ;-) [1] http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2427 _______________________________________________ Debconf-team mailing list [email protected] http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
