[Qgis-psc] Possibility of hackfest funding for non-EU devs?

[Paolo Cavallini]

Hi all,

Il 30/03/2015 13:53, Andreas Neumann ha scritto:
> Our finances allow us to sponsor 2-4 non-european core devs. It should
> be made clear that we cannot afford to fly in all non-european devs for
> every meeting, but that non-european core-devs can also participate
> every nth meeting (lets say every two years or so). This can be revised
> if our financial situation changes.

I have been thinking to this issue since a few years. I agree fully that
having every core dev at each HF is the very reason why HFs exist, so my
first reply would be to welcome Nyall.
I frankly think we are being unfair to non-European devs: why accept all
EU-based, and only a few from outside? This puts communities from "far
away" at a disadvantage: it easier for, say, a German translator to
participate that for, say, a Korean one.
On the other hand, realistically the inclusive model is not scalable: we
do have the funds to invite 1-2 devs from outside, it will always be
difficult to have all of them.
That's why I suggested to have multiple HFs, one per continent, in
parallel, and invest in having a good video connectivity among them: of
course physical presence is always better, but in this way we strive to
include, rather than being forced to exclude.
On the other hand, we should decide more globally in which direction to
invest our growing resources: my feeling is that there are unattractive
tasks that are handled on a volunteer basis, and this is unsustainable
over the long term, so I think devoting some resources to these would be
a good idea.
Of course this is a very general issue, and in the specific case I'd be
delighted of accepting Nyall.
Opinions?
All the best.
-- 
Paolo Cavallini - www.faunalia.eu
QGIS & PostGIS courses: http://www.faunalia.eu/training.html