Hi, The term "local team" has become loaded in DebConf history, and we might just want to avoid using it.
But it'd be wrong to deny the underlying concept, the existence of a group that identifies primarily with the organisation of a particular instance of DebConf at any given point in time, no matter what you call that group. This group assembles around the bid team, and does the early work. Over time, more and more people join, including volunteers from the region and people from other countries that also care about the conference. There is no arbitrary distinction (like explicitly "splitting off the local team"), but it's a fluid, natural separation, and as the conference draws nearer, the distinction fades, though never entirely. For instance, it's usually still the same people that write daily announcements during the conference, and handle other details. This group has a very strong motivation to make the conference a great success, as some of them will consider it "their" conference from the start through to the end. It is in DebConf's best interest to foster that motivation, and to keep those people engaged. That does not mean that the active team should be free to make all decisions or push all their ideas. Some decisions carry heavy weight (e.g. venue contract) and need wider involvement, while others leave room for more experimentation, such as the interplay of DebCamp/DebConf, other aspects of conference content, and peripheral (social) events. It's important to try out things every year, otherwise DebConf would stagnate. And the vision and ideas shared by people submitting and winning a bid constitute an important part of their motivation. Clearly, the people behind a winning bid should never just charge ahead without looking around, but rather should help everyone stay up-to-date even if they are not actively involved, and facilitate their catch-up when it's time.¹ Full consensus cannot be achieved for every decision, but the information available needs to enable everyone to trust that decisions are made with all things and people involved considered. Due to various reasons not subject of this mail, the members of the DC15 team ended up either leading or being a fundamental part of most of the teams. It worked out, but there was collateral damage resulting from integration difficulties. To avoid this in the future, it would help to establish equal expectations all along over regarding who takes the lead (and what that means), and how we all cooperate. We still have high doubts about the requirement of having to join an existing, long-lived sub-team in order to do work, or that all work must happen within a sub-team in general. This presents a high barrier of entry to newcomers, and it also seems paradoxical to fit stuff relevant only to one conference (i.e. "local" stuff) into sub-teams that should persist across multiple conferences. Also, many of the little tasks cannot be clearly associated with any one of the existing team. Moreover, not everyone involved with DebConf as a whole can muster the same availability and energy to the organisation of the next conference as early as those behind a bid (which can certainly include non-locals, as is the case for DC16 and also DC17 already). We should ensure that active people are not dependent on less active folks, especially in the early stages. The fresh energy brought to the table by the bid team, their ideas and their motivation should be channeled directly towards progress, instead. This might well mean that they'd be better suited to run the teams, where applicable,² i.e. organise meetings, keep track of things, communicate appropriately in all directions, and ensure that everyone involved is on the same page. It would give less active people the space they need to still offer their help, advice, experience, and generally provide input. But we should also not expect every bid team to be able to take full charge of the whole process, because some years there will be teams without the necessary people power. Then, obviously, the rest of the team needs to step up and some people might need to become more active than they'd otherwise be. Because this is the important point: while people behind a given bid are organising "their" conference, and driving things towards deadlines they know best, they are backed up by the entire team, including people who don't need an explicit "team leader hat" to oversee the efforts, influence decisions, or be able to stop problematic developments in the interest of DebConf. Anyone with limited time would probably rather help shape DebConf than be responsible for the day-to-day organisation of team(s). We should therefore treasure the idea of the "local team" (though maybe call it something else), and strive to leave them the space they want and provide the support they need. Our humble opinion, based on our experience, madduck, marga, Ganneff, maxy, azeem, OdyX, hug, RichiH, fil, highvoltage, indiebio, stefanor Footnotes: ¹) Along with communicating a decision, we should provide the background, describe how a decision was made, and give a rationale. This takes a lot more time, but in hindsight of DC15, it'd have been better use of our time than some other aspects of DC15 organisation. We recommend DC16 focus especially on this. For this to work and for the team to keep it up, it's necessary, however, that we refrain from challenging a decision once it's made, or else people will prefer not to share. ²) This might not work for all teams and also needs not happen the same everywhere. Infra/video immediately come to mind as exceptions…
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