Briefly, up front… you say: > We believe that mentoring is helpful and should be encouraged, > specially when the bid team has no much of DebConf experience. It > is good to remember though that bid teams do not need to have all > their communication proxied by a mentor, and the earlier they > establish direct communication with core teams members, the > better.
The role of a mentor should certainly not be that of a proxy, I am not sure where you got this idea from. But mentoring involves helping the bid team members figure out exactly what needs to be talked over, with whom, and at what time. This is ever more relevant the more complex an organisation is. That said, I want to respond to the following part earlier in your mail: > Another request was to replace Facilities team by a "Bid > Assistance Team", which would follow bid teams since their early > stages and would work together with them in venue arrangements > until the conference happens. (not quite accurately summarised, but it's close enough… see below) > We would rather keep the facilities team as it is defined now and > expect that bid teams interact with not only facilities people, > but with all the other teams when they have doubts about a certain > aspect of the conference. I think the facilities team is a dead-end, and my sentiment is amplified by the fact that said team never came to exist. I was asked once whether I'd have an interest in assuming the lead, but it was also made clear that I was only one possible lead of many. In the end, I declined, and here's the mail I sent to the chairs on 2014-11-25. I have not received a single response to this mail until today, when I read that you "would rather keep the facilities team as it is defined now". Previously, I've refrained from sending this because I wanted to give you the chance to handle this input as you see fit. As you now sent a request for comments, I feel the time's right to share. ----- Begin forwarded message ----- Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2014 00:20:58 +0100 From: martin f krafft <madd...@debconf.org> To: cha...@debconf.org Cc: margamanter...@gmail.com Subject: On the "Facilities Team" Message-ID: <20141124232058.ga30...@fishbowl.rw.madduck.net> Dear chairs, dear Marga (as coord team lead), The following summarises my contribution to scrollback tonight, and also picks up on the discussion with Tincho from last week in which I questioned the purpose of the Facilities Team (FT) as you had proposed. After further discussion and much thinking, I am starting to see a consistent picture. It's not exactly the picture you're drawing, but a version slightly modified in the way FT and the coordination team interface and work together. Let me try to paint it in the hope that I can convince you of this view. There are tasks beyond venue negotiation that you ascribe to the FT, but let's just focus on venue as the big, main task, which it is. Ideally, venue negotiation starts before a bid decision is made, for time reasons, but also because it's instrumental in negotiations to be able to say that e.g. a price needs to come down for a bid to have a chance. Therefore, the FT would already be working with bid teams and coach them during venue scouting and initial negotiations and I am led to believe (by ana) that the potential leaders of FT are already working with the DC16 bid teams. A DebConf bid is usually built around a venue idea or two. Therefore, developing those details during the pre-bid phase is generally the main work that needs to be done. This raises the question of what the bid mentors — and yes, I think we should have active bid mentors — would do and how one could ensure that bid mentors and FT members don't step on each other's feet — in some years like DC15, venue will include food, network, most everything, while in other years, the situation is much more complex and the overlaps not clearly defined. So instead of an artificial separation and two cooks^W teams working on more or less intersecting tasks, I would like to suggest to merge the two into one team. The team (let's call it MT(¹)) would at first be in charge of assisting bid teams develop their bids, including venue scouting, looking for/ensuring the basic requirements and engaging in preliminary negotiations. Once a bid decision for DCX has been made, MT assists with the actual venue negotiations (and e.g. conference dinner scouting etc., put your other FT tasks here), as well as budget preparation. Ideally, by the time DCX-1 comes around, the most important stuff (venue, maybe conf dinner, budget, etc.) will already be well on its way and becoming more and more the domain of the coordination team to oversee the execution of DCX. Now MT can start developing the DCX+1 bids, but we'll obviously still be available for DCX, although the amount of guidance needed by the bid team should be ever decreasing at this point as they'll be working rather closely with all the other teams by now. There are a number of decisions that need to be made along the way of MT and the bid team working together. It would also be the MTs job to ensure that what needs to be dicussed on dc-team (or whatever the best place will be) should be done so, and in a timely manner, by which I mean coaching the bid teams to send proposals to the list where appropriate, and asking for feedback with a reasonable deadline before moving on.(²) It is also conceivable, maybe even advisable, to have regular correspondence and/or meetings with the coordination team to discuss current issues in the various bids. This will not only help prevent problems, but it also familiarises the coordination team with the bid teams, one of whom will most likely be organising a DebConf to come. Hoping that this all makes sense and I was able to convince you, then I'd be highly motivated to work on this team (MT). I would also try to be a good leader, although I don't really have aspirations here (and I don't think leaders should be designated). Whether or not I'd be appointed, I'd try hard to do my part helping MT be perceived as a valuable resource, as a partner with whom the bid teams want to work, motivating them to spin their bids in the best possible way. I don't think MT should be about making decisions and we don't really need to have any powers beyond being in charge of what we do. Our goal would be to engage people interested in organising DebConf, see them off to a good start, help new ideas find fertile ground and make sure that the winning bid team knows how dc-team works and how to work with them/you/us. Oh, and obviously help negotiate good and reliable deals. I really just want to help make DebConf progressively better, and I think I can contribute both in terms of assisting bid teams getting off to a good start and helping organise the nuts and bolts of DebConf.(³) Good night, -m 1) "Coaching Team" or "Mentoring Team" or "Bid Assistance Team" or … 2) Look back at how DC15 was handled in this regard, and how we meticulously tried to be transparent about everything. It'll obviously be a good strategy to err on the side of caution in the beginning, but the long-term goal should be to establish a pretty firm understanding within MT of what will fly and what might not. 3) I don't really need/want to work on treasury/accounting, thinking that this should rather be the domain of Debian auditors anyway. And if we manage to establish a culture were ideas are allowed percolate from bid teams all the way through the actual DebConf without being extinguished on the way (e.g. DC14 "integrated DebCamp", or DC15 "morning sessions, talk slot lengths, more lightning talks, etc."), then I'd also have no real aspirations to work on the events team. -- .''`. martin f. krafft <madd...@debconf.org> @martinkrafft : :' : DebConf orga team `. `'` `- DebConf15: Heidelberg, Germany: http://debconf15.debconf.org DebConf16 in your country? https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf16
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