Hi, so in the beginning of my switzerland visit I was thinking why I was there and that this why should be documented. So let's do this here for now, and then I plan to put this into the wiki under Category:DebConfManual.
So what's the purpose of these venue/country pre-visits which we have done at least four times in the past? - meet unknown members of the localteam (unknown as in unknown in real life), to be able to better "understand" the localteam (from a global team perspective) - the same in the other direction, new localteam members (as in new to debconf-team) don't really know the global team members and often wonder how things are ment, why long time team members have certain opinions and so on. Obviously if only 1-3 global team members do such a pre-visit the local team cannot get to know the whole team better, but I believe people are captable to transfer this to other not present people.. - so summarized, this is team building, so that we become one debconf-team eventually. In the beginning (each year), we have three (overlapping) teams: localteam, globalteam and debconf-team. We don't want the localteam/globalteam seperation, but due to the nature of the bid process and also the way we organize Debconf, there are those two teams in the beginning of each DebConf organisation phase. And during the cause of making DebConf happen we then become one debconf-team, but we don't start as such. So one purpose of such pre-visits is starting this process (which is a human process, not one which can really be formalized.) - then another big point is transferring trust: trustworthy people from the globalteam "evaluate the localteam" and circumstances (be it venue, country or whatever) to then share this with the rest of global/debconf-team. For example the dc11-previsit didnt come back with "hard" proof (or written contracts!), but it enabled us to (better) trust Adnan that his words of "dont worry there will be no problem" were indeed based on reality. - and also this trust things goes in the other direction, not so much to the localteam (though also!) but mostly to local suppliers, mostly of venue, accomodation but also food suppliers and others, which we try to meet on such a pre-visit. DebConf is not a usual conference and Debian is not a usual project/legal entity, granted we are big+powerful+reliable, but this is more believable if indeed people from this project who live more far away come around to proof this. And sure, again, these are not hard proofs, but for the trust building part you don't need hard proofs. (Though people can eg google my name+DebConf and see history, which is a lot more than just shaking hands and trusting my friendly face.) - and likewise, this evaluation is there to build up trust so that we trust the local suppliers. A contract (and especially one which is drafted in another language than its written) is always just a contract. There are zillions ways to fullful contracts and its important to build a common understanding of what the _deal_ should become. >From the meeting with Mr. Pianaro I can say that I'm confident that they are interesting to make DebConf work, basically the way we want it. And this is soo much more important than whatever contract on paper. Last but not least I think we should have trust in ourselves and in the localteam. At the end of 2011 we decided to hold DebConf in this slightly different setting in Le Camp, as we trusted the swiss localteam that this would give the best DebConf experience in Switzerland (within the countries constraints, which mostly translates to: expensive) and we also trusted ourselves to be able to come up with the needed sponsorship amount. After having visited Switzerland, and having seen Interlaken, Le Camp plus some other bits of Switzerland, I still (+again) share our decision and trust (in ourselves) from back then. "Again", because I also lost courage a bit (~200k is a lot of money) and I was also questioning Le Camp suitability after reading the contract negotiations. So I went to Le Camp with a quite bad feeling against the venue (which is underlined by me just taking pictures of the bad beds and ommitting the good ones, as I was really not in favor of it when I arrived there) and then I left, supporting it again. There are several reasons for that: - Interlaken has several problems: - no real team behind - very much distributed within the city (long distances) - city in an expensive country: some people would be able to affort bars+restaurants, other not. So this would amplify the "switzerland is expensive"-seperation, while Le Camp would flatten it down - we would need to restart negotiations - less and worse accomodation (200 beds in a winding youth hostel (1.5km from the venue), plus 100 in large tents (2km from the venue) - we will loose time getting sponsors as we will first need to work on location+venue again - Le Camp is indeed a very nice venue with *lots* of excellent working spaces - we need concentrated efforts to get the sponsors we need to be able to do DebConf in Switzerland. Demotivating the team will not help us with that, quite the contrary. Micah brought up the topic that DebConf should not strive for becoming more expensive every year and that we should be considerate about the locations we choose. Changing continents every year is one part of this, but similar that we went to NYC/the USA and then Bosnia and Nicaragua, I also think we should go to other locations, be them more expensive like Switzerland, Japan or other places, as well as "more affortable" locations and different settings. Le Camp is a workable compromise IMO, and turninig it down now would put the whole DebConf13 in danger, for the reasons outlined above and also because Switzerland is so expensive, that all the cheap options are gone way in advance. Also, besides the demotivation issue (which surely will not demotivate everyone and probably not forever - but this can be enough to make us fail to get 20 or 40k which else we would have gotten) I dont think it's wise to simply overrule both our old decision ( http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120301.en.html ) as well as the localteams decisions: those who have been to both venues, favor Le Camp. (There is one very vocal "local", who never organized a DebConf and who didnt visit Le Camp, not in favor.) I was very worried about the budget and the contract and whether Le Camp would work as a location. After going there, I'm still worried about getting enough sponsorship money, but I'm not worried about the contract^w^wour agreement with Le Camp and the suitability of it anymore. Le Camp and it's management is fine for us. And budget worries (or rather the effects of having less money) would be way worse elsewhere. So changing things now would make me *really* worried, we would loose time (which is money), people and we would make a bad precedence for future years. Maybe we shouldnt have choosen Switzerland one might think, but I disagree for two reasons: 1. diversity also means going to "rich countries" 2. even if this DebConf will be expensive, we will only get the money because it's held in an expensive area, where companies are willing+able to donate this money to us. I can speak for german companies here: sponsoring a conference in Nicaragua has no value for them, while it has in Switzerland. So, back to trust. I've been involved in organizing ten DebConfs, I've done sponsorship in the past and following it now, I've seen the budgets, I've spoken about the contract directly with the other party, I've seen Le Camp and Interlaken and I also dare to say that I can somehow assess our options of getting other venues in less time (in short: just more expensive, as Switzerland is not only expensive, but also _small_, so there is less choice and choices tend to be, well, more expensive...), so I like you to trust me: Le Camp is a good choice and it's actually the best option we have. So what pre-visits will we do for DebConf14 and will we trust them? Maybe its a good idea to have some funds agreed so that always 2 people go, but then money was not the problem this time... .oO( Category:DebConfManual ) cheers, Holger _______________________________________________ Debconf-team mailing list [email protected] http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
