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

[Louis Desjardins]

2013/2/5 peter <peter at constantvzw.org>:
> hello Ale +
>
> my opinion:
>
>
>> Team members get their costs reimbursed (at least in theory...) even if
>> they don't give a
>> talk.
>
> ++
>
>> We reimburse travel expenses to people who give talks.
>
> Does one exclude the other ?
> Maybe it is a bot strong to state that you 'need to submit' ..
> but the two points seem compatible to me.
>
> And hey, maybe asking to submit has a positive effect from an organisational
> point of view:
> It can help to motivate people to put something on paper and send it in.
> -> which makes envisioning who will come, to do what a lot easier.

Hi,

The policy is clear from the begining.

Within budget, we reimburse the travel-only part of the expenses for
the round-trip to LGM, economy. Who can be reimbursed? A) Developers
who are member of a participating team at LGM. It is up to each team
to decide who is a member-developer. B) People who don’t need to be
members of a participating team but who give a talk at LGM.

I completely agree that the delays are way too long. However when it
gets to a point where it is difficult to manage for the people who
can’t wait any longer, we have made every possible effort to
accelerate the process when we get the info.

Funding in advance with the budget we have would compromise the rule
that we reimburse within budget in percentage ot the total amount we
need versus the total amount we can pay. The other point why we do not
fund in advance is because from the purchase of a plane ticket to the
LGM, lots of things can happen. What if the traveller cancels his/her
trip? What if the traveller doesn’t get his/her visa in time, what
if... etc. We can reimburse people who actually showed up. This is
true for just about any organisation offering travel fees
reimbursements. It is already something to have the money flow in one
straightforward way. If then we’re going to have to wait for someone
to reimburse LGM because we paid the trip in advance and the trip was
cancelled down the road for any good reason, we’re rapidly going to be
in a mess. And this *will* happen.

This does not address the issue of people having to pay a fare that
costs months of salary, though. Or anyone who doesn’t have the
financial capacities of putting up front a large amount of money for
his trip. OIF has been helping people from the Francophonie countries
to fund their trip and even pays for the hotel. That’s one good thing
because there are used to deal with that reality and they are a large
organisation so they can deal with trip cancellations too. I think one
thing we could do as LGM organisers is to establish bridges with some
large organisation such as OIF in other countries to help deal with
the special cases that Ale has described. Or the FSF, maybe?

We end up every LGM with a tight budget. Fortunately we have been able
to reimburse 100 % in all past LGMs. But this is always pretty close.

I hope this helps.

Louis


>
> ciao !
>
> Peter
>
>
>
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