Travel fund for foundation members.

[mikeal]

Based on feedback from the last board session I've drafted a fund for members to travel and promote the foundation.

This is based mostly on input from @Danese on a fund the Apache Foundation had early on and on conversations with @indexzero and @rvagg

[mikeal]

• @nodejs/evangelism because they will be managing the slides.
• @nodejs/tsc for approval.

[mikeal]

Note that once the TSC ratifies this it will still need to go to the Board of Directors for approval.

[indutny]

Indent.

[indutny]

Ah, nevermind.

[indutny]

LGTM

[rvagg]

I'd like this wording loosened up a little to make it "based on" or "approved by the TSC"

[mikeal]

Hrm... doesn't this open us up to a lot more administrative overhead in approving every deck that comes through?

[indexzero]

I agree with @rvagg here. Not letting presenters personal flair through on these decks would be a loss imho. I'm happy to volunteer with deck review to help streamline.

[mikeal]

We should discuss this a little more.

I'm basing this a bit on the success we had with the io.js Roadmap, which was translated in to like 11 languages and given at I don't even know how many meetups. One of the things we got out of that was collaborative iteration of the deck and an "approved" resource that encouraged localization.

I gave this Foundation talk at FresNode last week and there was plenty of "personal flair" in the way I delivered it even if the deck lacked personality. However, I do like talks that are more personal, and add a bit about the persons involvement, and I certainly touched on that during my delivery but didn't have anything extra in the deck to support it visually.

[bnb]

As a member of the Evangelism WG, this seems fine to me. +1, if it matters.

[rvagg]

We should also know where the money is going, does it need to be paid to the conference to reimburse or to the individual doing the purchasing. A note that we'll need proof-of-purchase or something official to match the $$ against what was spent would be helpful here too.

[hackygolucky]

If proof of purchase is required then are y'all assuming that it will only be -after- the speaker has attended that this stipend would be rewarded? This is a barrier for some--they can't afford to commit to speaking if they don't know whether it will be covered. I see this quite often in underrepresented groups speakers as they are also more likely to be paid less for their day work. I've experienced many a speaker having a tough time even waiting until the conference date in order to be reimbursed. I understand that can make things much more complicated accounting-wise, however.

[bnb]

@hackygolucky This was the one and only reason I didn't go to the Node summit. I didn't have the means to put up resources (money) as collateral, that would be paid back at a later date. I know I'm an edge case, but I feel like I should voice my angle to show that it does affect people.

[mikeal]

I'll need to make sure that the foundation can handle a pure stipend (rather than a reimbursement which is what we've done previously). It's actually much easier to manage costs using stipends, people consistently wait until the last minute when the costs go up when they know they are being re-imbursed.

As far as "proof of purchase," we should substitute with something like "link to ticket / hotel prices."

[indexzero]

@rvagg iirc the plan was that it wouldn't be reimbursements but would piggy-back off of the Linux Foundations travel booking system. @mikeal is that correct?

Either way we should be explicit about how folks should expect travel to be booked: hotels, flights, etc. Are they expected to lay out the $$$ and get reimbursed? Or is the foundation going to pay for it up-front? This has been important when booking speaker travel in the past for the conferences I've run.

[mikeal]

piggy-back off of the Linux Foundations travel booking system. @mikeal is that correct?

This wasn't specified yet but will need to be specified in the terms of the program before being approved by the board. I've actually never used the LF travel booking system. For ease of managing/budgetting by the TSC I recommend a straight stipend provided the LF can easily send them out (I've only sent them reimbursements thus far).

[rvagg]

Perhaps a note in here targetted at conference organisers too that they can contact us to request a speaker if they'd like one—this is aimed at promotion of the Node.js project and the Node.js Foundation, it's not about the individuals per se, it should also be seen as a way for conference organisers to tap into additional resources for mutual benefit.

[mikeal]

@rvagg great idea on the 'conferences requesting speakers.' Do we want to make this a slightly different process by which they say they need someone and we allow multiple people to apply to give the talk and then select one?

[bnb]

@mikeal The problem with that is certain speakers will be preferred over others by conferences, and get more events - if the selection process were on our side, this would work.

[mikeal]

@bnb right, we'd still want the TSC to select the speaker in this case, especially since we'd give preference to a local speaker over an international one.

[bnoordhuis]

A request or Requests?

[indexzero]

+1. Should be:

Requests may take up to a month

or

Each request may take up to a month

[kosamari]

I assume this is "official" doc for TSC/Foundation.
But once program is in place, maybe evangelism group can make wording friendlier for website ?
something like Hoodie is very encouraging in my opinion. http://hood.ie/contribute/#talks

[mikeal]

@kosamari good point! we should add something about this to the "individual membership" page once it goes up. this is basically a process document so it isn't as accessible as we'd want the documentation to be.