Travel Support Program/en

= OpenStack Travel Support Program =

The program's aim is to facilitate participation of key contributors to the OpenStack Design Summit covering costs for travel and accommodation. The Travel Support Program is based on the promise of Open Design. Key contributors are contributors whose presence is specifically relevant for the topics to be discussed at the Summit they're applying to. Relevance of somebody's presence is never evaluated in general ways: it's always relative to the content being discussed at the specific Summit. The OpenStack Foundation will set aside a fund to support this program. The total amount of the fund is to be divided among the key contributors.

Criteria and process
All contributors to OpenStack (developers, documentation writers, organisers of user groups around the world, Ask moderators, translators, etc) are invited to submit a request. PTLs and code reviewers also are requested to propose candidates.


 * Candidates apply on an online form to be published for "J" Summit in Atlanta, 2014
 * Travel Selection Committee evaluates entries based on criterias stated below
 * Travel Agent coordinates with key contributors.

The OpenStack Foundation will coordinate directly with the key contributors to arrange for their travel, according to the level of funds granted.

Who decides
The travel committee is made of OpenStack Foundation staff, plus the OpenStack PTLs for core, integrated and incubated projects and two volunteers from the OpenStack Board of Directors & User Committee.

How the decision is made
Members of the committee vote for each candidate based on their application with votes ranging -2 to +2. PTLs can use +3 for strong candidates for the Design sessions. Negative votes are to be considered for people known to be disruptive to discussions, non collaborative, time wasters. Not known get 0. People that never participated to OpenStack Summits start with a +1 vote. Votes are aggregated and a ranking is built. The ranking will not be public in order to avoid rancor and resentment. The Travel Committe will write a summary for each approved candidate highlighting the reasons for their approval (this will help future applicants in understanding what is considered valuable).

The Travel Committee submits the list with rankings to the OpenStack Foundation for building the final list. The final list will be assembled based on the individual travel costs, as estimated by the applicants. A negotiation phase may be needed between the Travel Committee and the Foundation staff. The main unknown tend to be flight costs as they're hard to finalize. Hotel costs are easy to estimate and cover by the Foundation.

The coordination of the Travel Committee happens on the mailing list, discussions are not archived and kept private for privacy of applicants.

Travel rewards and deadlines for next Summit
TO BE DEFINED FOR "J" SUMMIT IN ATLANTA, MAY 2014.

= Reports from previous editions =


 * Icehouse/Hong Kong edition