Re: Sponsorship for hackfests
The Foundation hasn't decided to cut back on hackfests. However, to fund them, we are going to have to come up with a new approach. Typically hackfests are funded by corporate sponsorship and that money is not readily available this year. We can certainly do better at showing companies return on investment for hackfests (they support hackfests but have asked for more documented results.) One way to do that would be to dedicate part of the hackfest, the last afternoon perhaps, to blogging and writing about results. But, even if we do that, I don't see us getting a lot of funding for hackfests from companies this year. So we need to come up with other ways to fund those that are important to the community. As Brian pointed out, Friends of GNOME, http://www.gnome.org/friends, is one way we can do that. We have also looked at having smaller hackfests in conjuction with other events to reduce costs. All ideas and suggestions are welcome. Stormy On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 12:18 PM, Philip Van Hoof pvanh...@gnome.orgwrote: Hi there, In Behdad's mail on gtk-devel-list, Behdad explains on why the foundation has decided to cut back on hackfests. This is a fair and reasonable reason, by the way (his last mail in the thread explains the financial aspect of it pretty well). http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-devel-list/2009-March/msg00165.html I think that during those hackfests people work on problems that companies, who donate sponsorship-money, are interested in. I fear that we have done a bad job at explaining them what the things were that we worked on. Maybe we didn't make the scope of those hackfests broad enough. I for example remember that in Berlin we had the idea of putting interviews with the hackers online. I never found those. This should be something the Foundation pushes for (given that they funded many hackers' flights I think it's fair that the Foundation gets at least some interviews with the hackers, to put online, in return). I think that if we'd include a few of the young projects into the hackfests, while explaining clearly to companies who are interested in these projects that our hackers work on these projects and that their sponsorship-money is used to for example pay for those hackfests, that we'll get at least some of those 90% sponsor offers back. That way they'll know that their sponsorship has a return of investment in code too (not just advertisement at conferences and on the website). Right now I can imagine that it's not always clear for sponsoring companies to estimate what they get in return. In economic hard times that means your sponsoring gets slashed from their budgets, indeed. Candidate projects that come to my mind include: GObject-introspection, Vala, Clutter, Tracker, GeoClue, Poky, DConf, WebKit, ... I'm sure I'm forgetting about a few hundred projects and I know gobject- introspection has been among the hackfest projects. To decide the projects we need a group that decides on how our horizon towards the future should look like. Which is also something we lack at GNOME in my humble opinion. (for many years) I don't think waiting for better economic times is even an option. Let's instead solve this. Cheers, -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Sponsorship for hackfests
Hi Philip, Philip Van Hoof wrote: I for example remember that in Berlin we had the idea of putting interviews with the hackers online. I never found those. This should be something the Foundation pushes for (given that they funded many hackers' flights I think it's fair that the Foundation gets at least some interviews with the hackers, to put online, in return). I agree with you that when the foundation has spent money on initiatives, the people who have benefitted have not always done everything they might have to publicise the support and ensure that people could see a clear value to the spending. The difficulty that Lucas has had getting articles reports about events for the annual report testifies to this, as does the long lay-off in GNOME Journal editions. [Aside: Lucas, are you still looking for an article/collection of articles about GUADEC?] I believe that the foundation board at least does request things like this - they've asked people to blog about events where they're funded to attend, and (as you say) I've seen proposals that attendees do interviews during co-ordinated events like the hackfest. But we don't have a whip, and we don't have a full-time editor to go around and constantly remind people of the things they promised they'd do. In a volunteer organisation, the members need to take personal responsibility for things like this, more often than not. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member dne...@gnome.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Sponsorship for hackfests
On Tue, 2009-03-31 at 09:37 +0200, Dave Neary wrote: Hi Philip, I agree with you that when the foundation has spent money on initiatives, the people who have benefitted have not always done everything they might have to publicise the support and ensure that people could see a clear value to the spending. The difficulty that Lucas has had getting articles reports about events for the annual report testifies to this, as does the long lay-off in GNOME Journal editions. I believe that the foundation board at least does request things like this - they've asked people to blog about events where they're funded to attend, and (as you say) I've seen proposals that attendees do interviews during co-ordinated events like the hackfest. Push for it, in a much more formal way. Don't just request them. It's the foundation's money: you can request things like this. We voted for you people so that you can. And if people don't like how you guys handle things like this, they should just vote different next year. You are already planning to start paying a sysadmin. In a similar way I'm guessing you can pay a journalist writing the articles and editing the interviews. I must say I have few experience with what is involved in this, so I can't comment myself on how this should be planned and executed exactly. I'm sure we have people who do in our group. But we don't have a whip, and we don't have a full-time editor to go around and constantly remind people of the things they promised they'd do. In a volunteer organisation, the members need to take personal responsibility for things like this, more often than not. Sure you have a whip: flight tickets. Don't pay them unless you have your interviews. You can even make a contract that says that. I also don't see what would be wrong with making clear agreements with participants. Especially not if every participant knows why the agreement is made. If the context of the agreement is reasonable, most of them will (I think) agree. I must note that when I participated myself I did note a sense of responsibility among the developers participating. Nobody was trying to be on a free holiday, everybody worked hard. But in their passion and being busy they wont all remember that they should also help with the interviews and writing blogs unless you make this as a requirement for the foundation's help. Clarity is I think the keyword. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Sponsorship for hackfests
Hi, Philip Van Hoof wrote: Push for it, in a much more formal way. Don't just request them. It's the foundation's money: you can request things like this. We voted for you people so that you can. It's been a while since anyone voted for me, mind :) (Note: this is also me, active foundation mamber, suggesting that people don't need to be elected to the board to be interested in helping the foundation - there's lots to do). You are already planning to start paying a sysadmin. I'm against this particular expense, I don't think we can afford it. In a similar way I'm guessing you can pay a journalist writing the articles and editing the interviews. Budget = trade-offs. More money for paying people = less money for air-fares. Don't pay them unless you have your interviews. You can even make a contract that says that. I also don't see what would be wrong with making clear agreements with participants. Especially not if every participant knows why the agreement is made. If the context of the agreement is reasonable, most of them will (I think) agree. You may have missed the recent animated debate on the sponsorship agreement which Stormy drafted for travel sponsorship? Adding extra conditions to being reimbursed is likely to have people up in arms. The role of the foundation is to help the GNOME project to function and develop as much as possible. I'm not completely against something like this, but I don't think it's politically or practically feasible. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member dne...@gnome.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Sponsorship for hackfests
On Tue, 2009-03-31 at 11:44 +0200, Dave Neary wrote: You are already planning to start paying a sysadmin. I'm against this particular expense, I don't think we can afford it. In a similar way I'm guessing you can pay a journalist writing the articles and editing the interviews. Budget = trade-offs. More money for paying people = less money for air-fares. Why would for example the mobile vendors use upstream infrastructure if it's constantly slow or broken? In that case, they wont. Isn't this what we all want to avoid? Don't pay them unless you have your interviews. You can even make a contract that says that. I also don't see what would be wrong with making clear agreements with participants. Especially not if every participant knows why the agreement is made. If the context of the agreement is reasonable, most of them will (I think) agree. You may have missed the recent animated debate on the sponsorship agreement which Stormy drafted for travel sponsorship? Adding extra conditions to being reimbursed is likely to have people up in arms. The role of the foundation is to help the GNOME project to function and develop as much as possible. I'm not completely against something like this, but I don't think it's politically or practically feasible. But if we need absolute agreement with every single individual involved in GNOME, we'll be a lame-duck just like the UN is. Caused by vetos of its permanent members. And that organization has just five of them. We'd have hundreds. People who don't understand that building something together means making compromises aren't the people who are going to produce much anyway. So why would we give a veto to such people? An animated debate just means that we have healthy meme competitions going on. It doesn't mean that we must refrain from making decisions. And yes, some people will be so angry that they'll leave. You can't do good for everybody. Bad luck. Life goes on. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Sponsorship for hackfests
Hi, Philip Van Hoof wrote: On Tue, 2009-03-31 at 11:44 +0200, Dave Neary wrote: Budget = trade-offs. More money for paying people = less money for air-fares. Why would for example the mobile vendors use upstream infrastructure if it's constantly slow or broken? In that case, they wont. Isn't this what we all want to avoid? Like I said, this is all about trade-offs. In this case, hiring a sysadmin will cost the foundation about as much as we spend on air travel for people to GUADEC, and all the hackfests we run. We are not talking about using the pencil stamp budget. Is our infrastructure constantly slow or broken? I am aware of short-comings, especially with getting new things set up, but GNOME's infrastructure has been pretty resilient, and any brokenness has been fixed quickly, in my experience. Is this worth (a) alienating our volunteer sysadmins by telling them what a crappy job they've done, and (b) not spending any money on any programmes at all? If we don't do things worth fundraising for, sponsors will not continue to give us money. The return on investment for Red Hat, Nokia, Novell and others is having us get together. We have been successful in fundraising for GUADEC because the value of it is obvious to all. Would the same be true of a sysadmin? But if we need absolute agreement with every single individual involved in GNOME, we'll be a lame-duck just like the UN is. Caused by vetos of its permanent members. And that organization has just five of them. We'd have hundreds. There's a pretty interesting logical jump :) When did I say we needed agreement of everyone? Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member dne...@gnome.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Sponsorship for hackfests
On Tue, 2009-03-31 at 13:56 +0200, Andreas Nilsson wrote: Philip Van Hoof wrote: I for example remember that in Berlin we had the idea of putting interviews with the hackers online. I never found those. I believe Mirco is still working on the editing of those. It appears he is almost done with them now though. http://macslow.net/?p=249 Yeah, some time ago there was a hosting question. Has Micro already found a location for hosting the (large) video files? -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Sponsorship for hackfests
On Tue, 2009-03-31 at 13:02 +0100, Alberto Ruiz wrote: 2009/3/31 Philip Van Hoof pvanh...@gnome.org: Sorry, but being on a foreign country, for hacking purposes and still doing some blogging is hard enough. You can ask, but you can't enforce people to do it. Sorry, but I flat out disagree. Those people get the opportunity to meet and work together with top software developers and still often get travel expenses paid by the foundation. I don't know how spoiled you can be claiming that it's too hard to do some work in return for that. People who don't want to do something for the foundation in return should realize how fscking lucky they are having a foundation paying for such opportunities. I have also rarely met people, at such hackfests, who sounded to me like unwilling to help the foundation with this. Actually never. You're forgetting the nature of the project, some people is willing to do some work, like write code, and the foundation helps, forcing people to blog or write articles is going to do nothing but hold people back from gathering together and write code, and if it doesn't they can just not blog and say they didn't have time (and they will be probably right about this). I understand your concern, but I encourage you to organize a hackfest, and try to push everyone to blog about it, and still, people in the outside would feel that the activities haven't been publitized enough. I'm talking with my experience on organizing the theming api hackfest here. It's not only about people. It's also done for companies who would do sponsorship offers. Management and architects at such companies value such publicity different. They ie. learn from it what our future will look like, whether or not we're heading in the right direction, etc. I do think it's *very* important to show what we are up to. -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Sponsorship for hackfests
Although it is disappointing that the GTK+ Hackfest was canceled, the GNOME Foundation still plans to support many projects and other events. Considering the economic times, it probably is not surprising that some of our plans will be affected. To help address this, the GNOME Foundation has been active recently in developing new sources of revenue. The Friends of GNOME website has been enhanced, and I encourage people to consider contributing to the projects that the GNOME Foundation supports. http://www.gnome.org/friends/ Also, we are working on making GNOME branded merchandise available. So, these sorts of efforts should help. There are probably other additional avenues that we could explore to augment our budget. Perhaps, for example, we could be more active in seeking grants. Or perhaps we could be more aggressive in finding more sponsors. Currently most of GNOME's sponsors are technical organizations which use GNOME software. Perhaps other types of organizations, like humanitarian ones, might be interested in some level of sponsorship if they were approached in the right way. Though, exploring new avenues of funding would probably make more sense to discuss on the marketing-list. Brian Philip Van Hoof says: In Behdad's mail on gtk-devel-list, Behdad explains on why the foundation has decided to cut back on hackfests. This is a fair and reasonable reason, by the way (his last mail in the thread explains the financial aspect of it pretty well). http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-devel-list/2009-March/msg00165.html I think that during those hackfests people work on problems that companies, who donate sponsorship-money, are interested in. I fear that we have done a bad job at explaining them what the things were that we worked on. Maybe we didn't make the scope of those hackfests broad enough. I for example remember that in Berlin we had the idea of putting interviews with the hackers online. I never found those. This should be something the Foundation pushes for (given that they funded many hackers' flights I think it's fair that the Foundation gets at least some interviews with the hackers, to put online, in return). I think that if we'd include a few of the young projects into the hackfests, while explaining clearly to companies who are interested in these projects that our hackers work on these projects and that their sponsorship-money is used to for example pay for those hackfests, that we'll get at least some of those 90% sponsor offers back. That way they'll know that their sponsorship has a return of investment in code too (not just advertisement at conferences and on the website). Right now I can imagine that it's not always clear for sponsoring companies to estimate what they get in return. In economic hard times that means your sponsoring gets slashed from their budgets, indeed. Candidate projects that come to my mind include: GObject-introspection, Vala, Clutter, Tracker, GeoClue, Poky, DConf, WebKit, ... I'm sure I'm forgetting about a few hundred projects and I know gobject- introspection has been among the hackfest projects. To decide the projects we need a group that decides on how our horizon towards the future should look like. Which is also something we lack at GNOME in my humble opinion. (for many years) I don't think waiting for better economic times is even an option. Let's instead solve this. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Sponsorship for hackfests
Hi there, In Behdad's mail on gtk-devel-list, Behdad explains on why the foundation has decided to cut back on hackfests. This is a fair and reasonable reason, by the way (his last mail in the thread explains the financial aspect of it pretty well). http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-devel-list/2009-March/msg00165.html I think that during those hackfests people work on problems that companies, who donate sponsorship-money, are interested in. I fear that we have done a bad job at explaining them what the things were that we worked on. Maybe we didn't make the scope of those hackfests broad enough. I for example remember that in Berlin we had the idea of putting interviews with the hackers online. I never found those. This should be something the Foundation pushes for (given that they funded many hackers' flights I think it's fair that the Foundation gets at least some interviews with the hackers, to put online, in return). I think that if we'd include a few of the young projects into the hackfests, while explaining clearly to companies who are interested in these projects that our hackers work on these projects and that their sponsorship-money is used to for example pay for those hackfests, that we'll get at least some of those 90% sponsor offers back. That way they'll know that their sponsorship has a return of investment in code too (not just advertisement at conferences and on the website). Right now I can imagine that it's not always clear for sponsoring companies to estimate what they get in return. In economic hard times that means your sponsoring gets slashed from their budgets, indeed. Candidate projects that come to my mind include: GObject-introspection, Vala, Clutter, Tracker, GeoClue, Poky, DConf, WebKit, ... I'm sure I'm forgetting about a few hundred projects and I know gobject- introspection has been among the hackfest projects. To decide the projects we need a group that decides on how our horizon towards the future should look like. Which is also something we lack at GNOME in my humble opinion. (for many years) I don't think waiting for better economic times is even an option. Let's instead solve this. Cheers, -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Sponsorship for hackfests
On 03/30/2009 02:18 PM, Philip Van Hoof wrote: Hi there, In Behdad's mail on gtk-devel-list, Behdad explains on why the foundation has decided to cut back on hackfests. This is a fair and reasonable reason, by the way (his last mail in the thread explains the financial aspect of it pretty well). Hi Philip, Thanks for the note. Just a minor correction: we had to cancel the GTK+ hackfest, which is more like a mini conf, when compared to the other hackfests we run (much smaller and much less expensive to run). We are still looking into and interest to hear proposals about smaller hackfests. behdad http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-devel-list/2009-March/msg00165.html I think that during those hackfests people work on problems that companies, who donate sponsorship-money, are interested in. I fear that we have done a bad job at explaining them what the things were that we worked on. Maybe we didn't make the scope of those hackfests broad enough. I for example remember that in Berlin we had the idea of putting interviews with the hackers online. I never found those. This should be something the Foundation pushes for (given that they funded many hackers' flights I think it's fair that the Foundation gets at least some interviews with the hackers, to put online, in return). I think that if we'd include a few of the young projects into the hackfests, while explaining clearly to companies who are interested in these projects that our hackers work on these projects and that their sponsorship-money is used to for example pay for those hackfests, that we'll get at least some of those 90% sponsor offers back. That way they'll know that their sponsorship has a return of investment in code too (not just advertisement at conferences and on the website). Right now I can imagine that it's not always clear for sponsoring companies to estimate what they get in return. In economic hard times that means your sponsoring gets slashed from their budgets, indeed. Candidate projects that come to my mind include: GObject-introspection, Vala, Clutter, Tracker, GeoClue, Poky, DConf, WebKit, ... I'm sure I'm forgetting about a few hundred projects and I know gobject- introspection has been among the hackfest projects. To decide the projects we need a group that decides on how our horizon towards the future should look like. Which is also something we lack at GNOME in my humble opinion. (for many years) I don't think waiting for better economic times is even an option. Let's instead solve this. Cheers, ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
