On Sat, 2005-06-18 at 11:52 +1000, Kim Oldfield wrote: > I feel that as a general principal for LA grants which produce produce > software or documentation, at least some of the payment should be withheld > until completion of the project. While it's not current policy of LA to go and fund development of things (yes, it would be cool, but development time costs big $$, and that's something we just don't have atm). We are aware of such things though (and discussed it this past weekend). > This suggestion is designed to discourage future grant applications from > people who may (for any reason) not finish the grant work, and make sure > that all grant work is completed. In other words, make sure LA (and the > community) gets the full value from grant money. This is not meant to imply > that Alison would not finish this HOWTO. yep, we're aware of such things. not sure it needs solid policy yet though, still working well on case-by-case basis. > Such a document will never be truly finished. As each conference evolves, > and produces updated experiences and statistics the HOWTO should be updated. > For the purposes of this grant we will need a reasonable definition of > finished - probably including details from LCA 2005 and earlier only. true. i would consider finished (for this purpose) to be something like: - having used the time allocated - have a document that covers a lot of aspects of running the conf in various detail (or non-detail) and pointers for more info (if needed - this could be as little as "go ask $name"). the aim isn't to work anyone to the bone, it's to get a good start that will help people. If it was easy and simple to organise a conf, there wouldn't be well paid professional conference organisers :) > To keep the HOWTO up to date long term we should consider either having a > maintainer (to collate patches), or making it generally updateable, eg in a > WIKI, or use one of the many version control systems. this is something we will have to consider - and may be a good discussion point for various LCA people. This may become a semi-regular expense.... i just don't know yet. > ] Is there any reason to worry that the > ] people who will probably be contributing to the document will be judging > ] when it's finished? > > Given that they aren't being paid to produce it, and they are the people who > can best understand how useful such a HOWTO will be, I don't see it as a > problem. same. we also have people looking to run an lca. if it's useful to them, then it's a success. -- Stewart Smith (stewart@linux.org.au) Committee Member, Linux Australia
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part