[Board] [SoC] Motion: use GSoC student mobility grant at FOSDEM geospatial devroom

[Margherita Di Leo]

Jody,

On Wed, Nov 8, 2017 at 4:00 PM, Jody Garnett <jody.garnett at gmail.com> wrote:

> Can this be handled by our GSOC organizers? As I understand each
> instructor had some funds available from participation, there was a
> discussion earlier in the year on options for using those funds.
>

This 500$ comes as a separate budget item in the GSoC payment. Some years
ago, mentors would submit directly to Google a request to finance a travel
stipend for a student they thought deserving, and google would choose the
students among the organizations. Each organization should submit 1 request
for 1 student, but it wasn't that smooth also to verify that because
mentors would act independently proposing names without coordination. Since
(AFAIR) last year, Google send those money directly to orgs to be used for
this scope. Unfortunately, last year we missed to use it so the money just
became part of the general OSGeo budget as well as the rest of the GSoC
budget.
For what concerns the whole GSoC budget, this year I tried to coordinate
mentors to come up with a common proposal on how to spend the money,
however, some mentors expressed the wish that those money are granted to
the projects that participated this year in GSoC. Some others didn't
express any opinion. I'm aware that not all the projects have a treasurer
and a PSC, some projects are not even part of OSGeo and participated as
guests, so rather than acting as a spokesperson for all mentors, I
suggested that they contact the board directly as PSC of their projects and
negotiate with OSGeo the terms how the money should be spent / transferred.
OSGeo has the last word on this matter because the money is not "mentor
stipend" but "organization reimbursement", it's granted to the org and not
to the single mentors. So OSGeo could for example ask the projects to
indicate how they intend to spend those money, like normally does for the
rest of the budget. But this is really up to the board to decide, and it's
up to the mentors to claim and leverage their proposals.

Thanks,

>
> --
> Jody Garnett
>
> On 8 November 2017 at 05:38, Margherita Di Leo <diregola at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Dear OSGeo Board,
>>
>> I would like to propose a motion to be discussed at your earliest
>> convenience. I'm not sure how to do that, I assume I can write it in this
>> mailing list?
>> This is my proposal.
>> In the payment issued by Google for GSoC 2017, they accounted 500 USD as
>> a grant for GSoC students mobility. This money should be used as a travel
>> grant for GSoC students that would like to present their work to
>> conferences.
>> I would like to propose that OSGeo use this money for the geospatioal
>> devroom at FOSDEM 2018 [1,2,3]. Why FOSDEM? Because for several years I
>> tried to invite GSoC students to present, they replied that they could
>> consider it only if there was a sort of economical aid. FOSDEM is a free
>> event and the amount of $500 should decently cover accommodation and travel
>> at least within Europe, but would make it also possible to join from
>> outside Europe with a small addition from their own pocket.
>> Please let me know should you need any additional information /
>> clarification.
>> Thank you in advance
>>
>> Kind regards,
>>
>> [1] https://fosdem.org/2018/
>> [2] https://lists.fosdem.org/pipermail/fosdem/2017-October/002633.html
>> [3] Last year's geospatial devroom: https://archive.fosde
>> m.org/2017/schedule/track/geospatial/
>>
>> --
>> Margherita Di Leo
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> SoC mailing list
>> SoC at lists.osgeo.org
>> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/soc
>>
>
>


-- 
Margherita Di Leo
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