[LGM] reimbursing traveling expenses: for active people or for presentations?

[ale rimoldi]

hi

on google+, i read the following post by alexandre prokoudine:

"""
We reimburse travel expenses to people who give talks. Hence you need to 
submit a talk proposal.
"""

i thought that the policy, was that people actively participating in the 
LGM are getting their traveling expenses reimbursed, if they asked for it.

the most visible consequence of this policy, is that team members get 
their costs reimbursed (at least in theory...) even if they don't give a 
talk.

as we read in a previous mail: we are organizing a meeting, not a 
conference.

it's nice to have talks.
it's even nicer to have good talks.
but the most important thing, is that people are there to actively 
participate!
and it does not really matter if they're giving a talk or not!

in my eyes, answers like the one quoted above, tend to put a pressure on 
the people to give a talk just to get the traveling costs reimbursed.
and gives a wrong image of the LGM to the people who have never been there.


in my eyes (2) talks are there to

- give good food for thoughts to all participants
- increase the participant -- and its ideas -- visibility in the meeting
not to get the traveling financed.

do i have such skewed opinion about what the LGM is?



on a side track, i urge you to think about the current policy for 
reimbursement.
as i already tried to explain last year, the current policy is not 
compatible with the few team members that don't live in a "western" country.

http://www.indiegogo.com/dmitriev-lgm-2013

it would be a pity, if we would miss him just because he could not get 
the money in advance but would have got the money afterwards).
the same $ 900 that are "very manageable" for many of us, are a huge 
amount of money for him!
the fact that it's very likely he has not got yet last year's money does 
not help either.


all in all, the policy that the money is payed afterwards is ok for me. 
really. but we should be able to make exceptions for people that are 
very active contributors in their project and have a really hard time in 
finding the money to pay for traveling (to be clear: i'm talking about 
people living in countries where the ticket costs several months of 
avarage salary! and i'm talking about rather cheap tickets! and i'm 
talking about people who have an important role in their project and 
plan to have a very active LGM with code sprints and lot of meetings!)

currently, we have three or four pledgies that are running in parallel 
and are -- as far as i know --  all equally unsuccessful.
this is not something i'm proud of, but it's probably a direct 
consequence of the current policy.


any thoughts?


have a nice day
a.l.e
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