[Battlemesh] Call for sponsored travels to Battlemesh v9 in Porto, Portugal

Sat Feb 20 19:42:53 UTC 2016

On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 05:24:35PM +0000, Filipe Borges Teixeira wrote:
> Hi! I will add some comments to Simon words.

Thanks for the detailed comments!

> 2016-02-19 12:58 GMT+00:00 Simon Wunderlich <sw at simonwunderlich.de>:
> 
> > Hi Philipp,
> >
> > On Friday 19 February 2016 11:36:54 Philipp Borgers wrote:
> > > May I ask why this is restricted to non-EU residents and "only" covers
> > the
> > > travel cost?
> > >
> > > The EU is quite diverse and in the end the finicial situation depends on
> > the
> > > individual and the situation they live in.
> >
> > This is true, situations are different. However most of our participants
> > are
> > from the EU, and we want to avoid explaining/discussing why some
> > participants
> > may apply why others can't - we don't want to double check on people, and
> > we
> > don't want to create grudges between our "regular" partcipants. Drawing a
> > line
> > for non-EU participants minimizes organization overhead and should also
> > avoid
> > troubles among our EU participants.
> >
> >
> Exactly. I would say 80%+ of the participants are from Europe, and from my
> point of view WBM should be as worldwide as possible, that is why we are
> promoting non-EU participants like in previous year. If the V10 edition
> would be in the US I would be happy to know they were giving preference to
> non-US, for instance, as going to the US usually costs over 800-1000€.

Do we give preference to non-EU or do we restrict the sholarship to non-EU?
Reading the initial mail again it sounds like we restrict it to non-EU citizens.

Maybe we can improve the wording a bit and say something like this:

"If you would love to attend the battlemesh but your finacial situation hinders
you please get in touch with us". Or something else that encourages people to
talk to use so we solve the problems as community. I would volunteer to help
with this.

If you open up a grant of 800€ for people in the EU you could ship around 10
people to the venue (at least from Germany).

> Also flight costs within Europe are much cheaper than among Europe and Non-
> > Europe. For example, a two way flight ticket from Germany to Porto starts
> > at 80
> > Euro, while its 600+ Euro for India, for example.
> >
> > I think it makes sense to give preference to people leaving as far as
> possible to the venue, where the costs are usually proportional to the
> distance. We could have set the call for all people, but we would still
> giving preference for non-EU participants based on the distance/cost to the
> venue. It has been like this last year, and it has been published on the V9
> wiki since November. Even though, we are open for any suggestion, and it is
> the majority that dictates these decisions. It is a good point to discuss
> during the WBM itself on how to make it for the V10 edition in France.
> 
> 
> > We think that bringing people from Non-EU will diversify and bring new and
> > fresh ideas into Battlemesh - and spread community networks around the
> > world
> > which are now quite common in Europe but not so much elsewhere.
> >
> 
> Totally agree.

I guess everybody does.

> > As for why it "only" covers travel costs: We want participants to cover at
> > least a portion of the expenses, to avoid people just taking a free trip
> > and
> > also avoiding people not showing up (after we bought the flight tickets).
> >
> >
> The decision to cover the airplane ticket and not the accommodation was to
> avoid "no shows" - people that get the plane ticket and do not go to the
> event itself, meaning that they will only get the scholarship for leisure.
> It is also a way to make it more fair to all other participants who are
> paying for their accommodation. Increasing the sponsorships a little more
> than we have this year might mean (almost) free accommodation for every
> participant, which would be even better! Still, €125 or even €150 for 6
> nights including breakfast is not expensive, I think. We are trying, on the
> other hand, to have a very affordable food package this year.

You are doing a great job at creating a very affordable and comfortable
battlemesh. It's my honest opinion!

Maybe we can encourage scholars to contribute in some way (back), e.g. by
giving a small talk, workshop, show some tricks, jump around three times 
in the air.

Why do we assume that people just make holidays with the grant
anyway? Is this an experience we made in the past?

By defining what is expensive and what is not I think you ignore the fact that
expensiveness is quite a individual problem.

> > Hope that helps. :)
> >
> > Cheers,
> >       Simon
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Battlemesh at ml.ninux.org
> > http://ml.ninux.org/mailman/listinfo/battlemesh
> >
> >
> Have a nice weekend,
> Filipe Teixeira

Thanks for entering a constructive discussion!

You too!
Best Philipp

> -- 
> [image: INESC TEC]
> 
> *Filipe Borges Teixeira*
> Centro de Telecomunicações e Multimédia
> Centre for Telecommunications and Multimedia
> 
> *INESC TEC*
> Campus da FEUP
> Rua Dr Roberto Frias
> 4200-465 Porto
> Portugal
> 
> T +351 22 209 4299
> M +351 91 247 8025
> F +351 22 209 4050
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