Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

Last year we had a budget to sponsor key people to the Maemo Summit (travel and accommodation) and this year we will do the same.

But can we do it in a better way? Last time I was the one and only benevolent dictator, the whole process was quite time consuming, many participants had to pay in advance with their credit cards and then get reimbursed many weeks after.

Some ideas:

- Clear criteria to be invited: speakers, core volunteers in the organization, what else?

- The decision of inviting community members is made by community members (who?)

- An external travel agency takes care of travel arrangements, as we did in the Danish Weekend.

- We book a number of rooms in the same place and we pay in a single go as group reservation (as done with the Tracker Hackfest last year and in the Danish Weekend too).

This system requires that the list of approved sponsored participants is known quite in advanced. It is also tied to the approval of sessions/speakers.

Perhaps we spend 50-80% of the budget this way and we look for more ad-hoc decisons and more manual handling of expenses after that, to have some flexibility closer to October?

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

Seems sensible on the face of it.

I think it'll be interesting prep for if there's a discount programme for the next device; and whether there's any animosity over the selected candidates getting sponsorship; and the selection mechanism.

Question on a single block booking for accomodation would be the quality of the rooms and the potential number of rooms needed limiting the options quite significantly.

Selecting which "general" community members go could be something like:

1. Top n karma holders
2. Top m tmo posters
3. Top o tmo thanks count (or ratio?)
4. One slot for a "caption" competition winner on tmo: "I'd like to go to the Maemo Summit because...". Judged by the council.

There's a lot of overlap in those groups with speakers & core community volunteers anyway.

Also, what about some members of the upstream communities? Sponsorship seems like a good way of saying "thank you" and potentially getting them more involved in Maemo as a developer; rather than just an upstream provider.

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

+1, very good idea.

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

I really like the idea of booking lots of rooms at an inexpensive hotel.
The ideal would be a bunch of small rooms with one or two beds (for the grumpy old folks), and a few big rooms with hostel-style bunks (for the 20-somethings).

I can only speak for myself, but I suspect I'm speaking for many more when I say this: it doesn't have to be the Ritz, but I don't want to walk down a public hallway to have a shower and I don't want to sleep in a room with 6 other guys. On the other hand, I could probably share a room with someone (I've gotten to know a few of the other community members now).

(EDIT: Oh, and the hotel should have Wi-Fi :D )

There's got to be some reasonable places that meet those criteria. And they should have rooms available in October.

I also think getting sponsorship worked out as soon as possible is good for everyone. It keeps costs down, lets people plan and arrange their schedule, and gives everyone a chance to apply.

The other question I have is: some people will be flying from other continents for this. Is it really only going to be two or three days long? Is there any way to connect this with another event to make the long flights more "worth it"?

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

I second Qole's suggestion. Something like the Generator hostel I stayed at in Berlin would be fine. I'd prefer booking somewhere recommended by the Summit organizers, knowing it will conveniently close by and used by fellow summiteers, rather than trying to divine one through Internet invocations myself in a city I don't know :-)

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

Rooms in one hotel = good. (If possible.) Otherwise, maybe in the same block location?

Tim

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

I thought the 'budget' type idea was good last year. You find your own accommodation but you only have x to spend, go over it and you pay the difference. That way if people want to stay in a particular place and its within budget there is nothing stopping them.

Takes the accommodation headache away from Nokia and puts in with the individual being sponsored.

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

I'd like to see the council have a big say in who goes. We did elect them as representation for ourselves as a community so its only fitting that they are heavily involved in deciding who should be sponsored from the community.

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

Probably the two options is the best suit here. Booking a lot of rooms in a particular hotel will probably reduce the price of each room and also" takes the accommodation headache away from" the participants :)

Re: Sponsoring participants to the Maemo Summit
 

For reference, there is an existing Wiki page for this - I'm tracking the main ideas to come out of the thread there, it would be nice to try & crystalise & answer some of the open questions: http://wiki.maemo.org/Maemo_Summit_2...onsored_travel

The questions I raised were:

• Procedure for attendees to ask for sponsorship
• What is the total travel budget?
• Who will authorise travel requests?
• When and how will reimbursements be handled?
• What criteria will be used to decide who gets travel authorised?

Seems like we already have some decent answers for some of those questions.