Prospective board members: travel sponsoring.

[Luc Verhaegen]

On Mon, Mar 18, 2019 at 07:24:48AM -0400, Rob Clark wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 17, 2019 at 7:25 PM Luc Verhaegen <libv at skynet.be> wrote:
> >
> > The board meeting log of august 16th says the following:
> > (https://www.x.org/wiki/BoardOfDirectors/MeetingSummaries/2018/08-16/)
> >
> > "Since the paper committee had to reject lots of talks this year (35
> > submissions for 18 slots) board discussed how to still make it possible
> > for anyone to attend with modest means - travel sponsoring is coupled to
> > accepted talks. Board decides to extend offering travel sponsoring to
> > anyone who submits a talk proposal."
> >
> > This seemed to have happened well _after_ the deadline for talk
> > submission occured, precluding a lot of people from applying for such a
> > generous offer.
> 
> The intention was to allow people to attend XDC even if the only
> reason their talk was not accepted was that there were not enough
> slots relative to the # of submissions.  It wasn't intended as a
> freebee, ie. submit a crap talk that wouldn't be accepted anyways, yet
> still get travel sponsorship.
> 
> So the fact the decision was taken after the CFP deadline is
> immaterial.  In fact, it would have been weird to make it before we
> had too many talk submissions.

True, but then the question there becomes, was anyone sponsored after 
the fact, after the rules have changed?

> 
> > And it is generous; i will now definitely submit a talk for 2019, as i
> > am bound to find something tiny to code that i can give a talk on.
> >
> > I also think that i have not seen who has benefitted from this
> > sponsorship money that was spent, or the companies that they work for (i
> > trust that the answer to the latter is "none"). Have i missed or
> > overlooked this?
> 
> We vote on travel approvals, it should all be in the meeting minutes.

There is surprisingly little detail in both:
https://www.x.org/wiki/BoardOfDirectors/MeetingSummaries/2018/08-16/
and
https://www.x.org/wiki/BoardOfDirectors/IrcLogs/2018/08-16/

The question of transparency comes up again here...

"<danvet> the small extension to include all who proposed a talk (not 
just accepted), with the wildcard to let us reject as we see fit"

and

"<danvet> tlwoerner, includes a "at the board's discretion" or similar 
lingo"

Everything of that seems to be on board@ and amazingly little of that 
seems visible to members.

Luc Verhaegen.