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Travel Support Program

Revision as of 14:32, 12 February 2014 by Annegentle (talk | contribs) (Composition of the Committee for Atlanta 2014)

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 3 people from User Committee, 3 people from Board of Directors, 3 people among OpenStack Ambassadors, 3 people among PTLs/TC members and Foundation staff. The members are coopted by their peers and/or picked by the Community Managers with the objective to maximize representation of gender and geographic areas in the Travel Committee. The Committee is formed anew before each Summit.

Composition of the Committee for Atlanta 2014

  • From the Board of Directors: Alan Clark, Randy Bias, Sean Roberts.
  • From the Technical Committee: Anne Gentle, Doug Hellmann, Sean Dague.
  • From the User Committee: Jaesuk Ahn, Kavit Munshi, Tim Bell.
  • From the Ambassadors: Erwan Gallen, Michael Still, Marcelo Dieder.
  • From OpenStack Foundation: Claire Massey, Stefano Maffulli, Tom Fifield.

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.

How to apply

Fill in the online application form. Applicants will be notified according to the deadlines below.

Deadlines for next Summit

  • Jan 28 Initial publication, start collecting applications
  • Mar 2 Final deadline to submit applications
  • Mar 3 Start evaluation of submissions by Travel Committee
  • Mar 24 Notifications of approved grantees

Travel rewards

The grants will cover a combination of flights, accommodation and access pass to the Summit.

Reports from previous editions