Jump to: navigation, search

Travel Support Program

Revision as of 17:36, 11 June 2018 by Rm you (talk | contribs) (How to apply)

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, organizers 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 by filling out this online form
  • Travel Selection Committee evaluates entries based on criteria 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 comprised of 6 people total (1 Board of Director, 1 TC member, 1 person who is involved with Outreachy, 1 ambassador, 1 UC member, and 1 Foundation staff member). 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 each year.

Composition of the Committee for Vancouver and Berlin 2018

Alan Clark (Board of Director)
Ashlee Ferguson (Foundation Staff)
Emilien Macchi (Technical Committee)
Mahati Chamarthy (Outreachy)
Matt Van Winkle (User Committee)
Ye Lu (Ambassador)

How the decision is made

Members of the committee vote for each candidate based on their application with votes ranging -2 to +2.

Negative votes are to be considered for people known to be disruptive to discussions, non collaborative, time wasters. Not known get 0. Votes are aggregated and a ranking is built. The ranking will not be public in order to avoid rancor and resentment. The Travel Committee 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.

How to apply

For the Denver PTG: https://openstackfoundation.formstack.com/forms/travelsupportptg_denver_2018 For the Berlin Summit: https://openstackfoundation.formstack.com/forms/travelsupportberlin

Applicants will be notified according to the deadlines below.

Deadlines for Denver PTG

  • July 1, 2018: Final deadline to submit applications for Round One approvals
  • July 5, 2018: Notifications of approved grantees for Round One
  • July 29, 2018: Final deadline to submit applications for Round Two approvals
  • August 2, 2018: Notifications of approved grantees for Round Two

Deadlines for the Berlin Summit

  • August 30, 2018: Final deadline to submit applications
  • The week of September 11, 2018: 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