On Fri, 30 Apr 2010 19:44:47 -0400, Jimmy Kaplowitz <ji...@debian.org> wrote: > Hi Micah, > > Thanks for sending such a thoughtful (if long) email. My thoughts are below.
Yeah, sorry it was long, I was wanting to make sure I detailed the concern while still remaining civil and not accusing anyone of any bad faith. > > From a process perspective, this is very confusing. > > Yes. The global team felt strongly (and probably accurately) that travel > sponsorship should not be a purely local thing since, even more than most > globally relevant things having a worldwide set of perspectives is important > to > know Debian contributors in different parts of the world. As I said, I don't disagree with the global team's decision, I think that it is correct to have a wider set of perspectives involved with this. My problem is purely with the process, communication and lack of clarity of the relative power of the different teams. If the global team is going to override, overrule, usurp, take over, contradict, or whatever something the localteam is/was doing, then a few things need to be made more clear about how that works, that it is potentially going to happen, or that it has happened. Additionally, the relationship of the global team and the local team needs to be clarified. If the global team has some sort of power over the local team, that needs to be spelled out, because from my perspective that has not been communicated, however it seems to be implied or exercised in ways that are not clear. I believe Michael when he said that he did not read the local team minutes, and would have acted differently if he had known that there was some bursary action, or volunteers in that area, such a mistake is understandable. However, what I haven't heard is why the agenda was brought to the global team by local team memebers, who were fully cognizant of that, being at both meetings, yet did not represent the local team's situation, or suggest that Michael contact the local people. Was it simply forgotten, or was there some concern that the local bursary team was not doing anything? > > I'm pretty sure that this was just an oversight and part of the general > > discombobulation about how the local and global parts fit together. Both > > Hydroxide and Mr. Beige have done their best to represent the local team at > > the global meetings, and I suspect that the local recruitment for this team > > at that earlier meeting was simply forgotten. > > I don't remember if we mentioned it at the global team or not; if we did, the > reasoning of the global team which I mentioned above explains why that didn't > work for them in this case. I understand the concern that there should be a more global perspective, but if that was the reason, then the concern should have been brought to the local people, and a request made to us that we broaden the involvement, as was done with the local talks team. Perhaps ask one of the local team folks to represent themselves at the global team meeting about this issue. > > They are also scheduled to favor european time, which doesn't really work > > for > > many people on the local team. This results in a weird dynamic where these > > groups are very different and disconnected. > > Good point. Hello European DebConf organizers! Would you be willing to > consider > staying up a few hours later to avoid conflicting with many DC10 people's > schedules? If not, would you be willing to consider weekend IRC meetings? I certainly would. > > In general, it might be better to stop the separation between the two groups > > and instead of there being a local team and a global team, instead say that > > we are all part of the Debconf effort. We have different mailing lists and > > IRC channels, yet this difference is subtle and has not really been needed > > in > > any substantive way. It might help eliminate some confusion if we stop have > > multiple channels and mailing lists. > > The separation traditionally exists because all but two previous DebConfs have > occurred in countries where the native language was something other than > English. Thus usually local team discussions are mostly conducted in the > native > language, and those local people with sufficient English skills attend both > local and global meetings keeping both groups in sync with the other. It's > less > relevant in 2010 just as it was in 2007, but with less of a geographical and > social overlap between the historically Europe-based DebConf global organizers > and the local team than was true then. Sure. The history is useful information about why it has been this way in the past, I suspect this may be a useful setup for the future as well. However, for our purposes, I still think that the separation has not been in our favor, and has instead confused things. Personally, I think that we should invite everyone on the local team list to join the global team list, and make it abundantly clear that the global team meetings are where people should be participating. > > Secondly, please update the schedule[5] to reflect the new timeline > > regarding > > sponsorship decisions. I'm not exactly clear now what it is supposed to be, > > but I do know that the March 17th deadline for first-pass sponsorship > > decisions is *long* past, and I don't know what to tell people who are > > asking > > me about this. If I am properly clued in I will try to update it myself. I > > think I understand it has been turned into May 15th, but there may be other > > adjustments here that I am not aware of. > > The original date was April 17, not March 17, but it has indeed > passed. Oops, my mistake, I meant April! > The technical issues preventing the team from rating travel > sponsorship requests were only finally fixed a day or two ago. However > this wasn't intended to be a first pass of sponsorship decisions for > every request; it was intended to be a final decision for only the > requests which can obviously be resolved one way or other. This was a > local team idea that the global team went along with, fwiw, not > originally a global team idea. Even if the date had been met, most > people wouldn't have heard back by then. I'm confused, this date was met? Or if not, the schedule should be updated still? micah
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