I think it's probably good to have some sort of rough guidelines but situations can vary so much that I'm not sure it's worth getting too detailed with these. The situation of conference organizers and individual speakers also varies widely.<div>
<br></div><div>The challenge with a per diem is that a sensible amount does vary hugely, not just by country but by city. In quite a few cases, conference organizers may have a deal with a particular hotel, which often includes some free or heavily discounted rooms, so they would rather give you one of these rooms than pay a separate per diem. And also many conferences have social events which mean you don't need to pay for dinner separately if you get into those (and some don't of course). I have often done events where the conference paid for travel and hotel but I picked up food and incidentals myself. But my point is just that there is a very wide range of situations.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Also the situation of speakers varies. For some people, especially those who work for larger companies, the company and/or individual may see value in the publicity of speaking, and the networking they get at the conference, and what they can learn from the rest of the program, or they just see value in a good opportunity to spread the word on what they want to talk about, so they may be happy to pay the expenses if the conference doesn't have a budget for it. My point here is that I don't think we should have an expectation that conferences have to pay expenses in all cases (but in some it's entirely appropriate of course).<br>
<div><br></div><div>I have been fortunate to speak at lots of conferences around the world and the circumstances have varied a lot, from me paying my own way individually, to my company paying, to the conference paying expenses, to them paying expenses plus a speaker fee. There are lots of other factors that go into whether deciding to accept including what I think I will learn from the conference and attendees, what is the audience, is it a place I want to visit :) etc etc. Again my point is just that situations really vary, even for me as an individual.</div>
<div><br></div><div>I think what Jeff and others have raised is maybe that we should have some guidelines to set the expectation that speakers may need reimbursement for expenses, rather than just having an expectation that everything is free. This would certainly help initiate the conversation about being paid, which I think is a help. But at the same time I'd hate to see things switch to there being an expectation that any time an OSGeo advocate speaks at an event they have to be paid a set amount (I don't think anyone is suggesting that, but there's a bit of a danger of things moving that way if we set specific per diem rates). We need to recognize that a lot of events have very limited (sometimes no) budget for speakers, so if we as a community aren't willing to pay our own way some of the time, the number of speaking opportunities we get will be massively reduced. (As Mark said, this opens up the question that if we had more revenue then potentially OSGeo could afford to fund more activity like this, but right now we are very limited in what we can do directly).</div>
<div><br></div><div>So anyway, I guess my main point after rambling round a bit is that I am wary of a "one size fits all" solution. I think we should set an expectation that it is reasonable for speakers to expect to have some or all of their expenses covered, but that this may not always be needed depending on the situation. And that there is some flexibility - providing free accommodation at the conference venue would be a very reasonable option, for example (instead of a per diem). </div>
<div><br></div><div>In general it always has to come down to a negotiation between the speaker and the event organizer - if event A says I can only afford to offer you a room and free entry to the conference, you'll have to pay your air fare, speaker B may decide that makes sense for her situation but speaker C may not.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Cheers,</div><div> Peter.</div><div><br></div><div><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Aug 29, 2012 at 7:19 AM, Eli Adam <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:eadam@co.lincoln.or.us" target="_blank">eadam@co.lincoln.or.us</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div class="im">On Wed, Aug 29, 2012 at 5:50 AM, nicolas bozon <<a href="mailto:nicolas.bozon@gmail.com">nicolas.bozon@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
<br>
> May be we could get an average amount that previous Ambassadors spend for<br>
> travelling and speaking in every continent.<br>
> I'm not sure every FOSS4G conferences would be able to cover all that,<br>
> that's why i was telling about the Foundation money.<br>
> I'm sorry if i was wrong on this.<br>
<br>
<br>
</div>FYI: In addition to US per diem rates,<br>
<a href="http://www.gsa.gov/portal/category/21287" target="_blank">http://www.gsa.gov/portal/category/21287</a>, there is also the State<br>
Department <a href="http://aoprals.state.gov/web920/per_diem.asp" target="_blank">http://aoprals.state.gov/web920/per_diem.asp</a> for the whole<br>
world. Although I'm sure these both have flaws, using this or<br>
something similar avoids the difficulty of selecting an amount for<br>
each place or an absolute amount that works in many areas. This also<br>
removes any debate about the 'appropriateness' of selecting this hotel<br>
or that hotel. Other Counties probably offer similar websites.<br>
<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br>
Eli<br>
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