Hi Antonio,
Am 14.11.19 um 18:00 schrieb Antonio Terceiro:
I think the specifics in this case exemplify a general issue, which is
the fact that the global team is understaffed. For exemple, in DC19 the
local team had to put signifficant effort into tasks that could -- and
probably should -- very well be handled by others while the local team
concentrates on the local issues. The later are enough work already.
For example most of my available time was sucked up by:
- seeking international sponsors, many of which are regular sponsors;
talking to them would have been
- content (sending out CFP, coordinating the reviews, publishing
schedules etc)
- maintenance of the website
Because I had to work on all that, I kind of alienated myself from most
of the local tasks, to the point that the fact that I live in Curitiba
was pretty much irrelevant most of the time.
This is completely different from my personal view of things.
Each local team produce "their DebConf". We very deliberately have high
degrees of freedom between the years. We want to foster creativity and
differentiation, even experimentation to a reasonable degree. Whatever
reasonable at each moment is. This means a local team cares for - say -
the topics, tracks, talks on their schedule. Wether they do an open day
or not. Whether they do talks in other languages than English. Etc. They
can and should rely on volunteers from previous years (content team) to
transfer knowledge, have consistency and continuity where desired. And
even offload some work where that is needed. But nobody is obliged to
take over work that you don't want to do yourself. So you either find
people that help you or you do it yourself or it doesn't happen.
For some teams a local team gets a lot provided (e.g. video, frontdesk)
and for some little (e.g. visa, conference dinner). Fundraising or the
website are somewhere in the middle of that spectrum.
So the global team is not a service organization where everything is
catered for that does not need people in the city of the next DebConf.
Actually we need no people in that city at all. We did a very nice
DebConf15 in Heidelberg and not a single team member lived there. We
took a train from Munich and elsewhere when we had to. That was probably
three times or so as we luckily had a very nice chap living nearby
making photos, taking measurements and do other venue scouting. I was
also local team for DebConf16 and have not lived in South Africa at all.
Very few jobs need local presence. And none of these permanently. So
that cannot be the differentiation factor between what a local team
member does from a non-local one.
Kind regards,
Daniel
