Re: [Debian-portland-soc] [Debconf-team] [DC14] Portland team: DebConf in the USA

Hi Gunnar, On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 07:26:26PM -0600, Gunnar Wolf wrote: Thanks for giving us the opportunity to address this question. I am aware that there are Europeans involved in Debian who were conscientious objectors to DC10 being held in the US; and I applaud their opposition to modern oppressive travel regimes and respect their personal choice to not travel to conferences in the US. However, making this a DebConf-level issue is a deplorable double-standard: - Governments and airlines of EU nations are complicit in the enforcement of the US's invasive security rules. - The EU is not more friendly to visitors from (arbitrary) developing countries than the US is. - The (logistical and monetary) costs for getting a visa to the EU if you must apply for one are not substantially different from those for getting a visa to the US. - While the US immigration regime differs in some relevant details from that in the EU, such as the fingerprinting requirement, the broad strokes of the policies are the same. The only thing unique about DebConf in the US has been the vocalness of objections. I'm sure there were people who chose not to attend DebConf11 in Bosnia, who chose not to attend DebConf12 in Nicaragua, and who would choose not to attend a DebConf14 in Venezuela because they disapprove of one aspect or another of these countries' government/policies. However, any such boycotts did not prevent us from holding a successful DebConf in Bosnia, in Nicaragua, or in New York; they would not prevent DebConf from being a success in Venezuela if that's what the DebConf committee chooses; and they would not prevent the success of a DebConf in Portland. None of this is meant to downplay the significance of visa difficulties for those affected. But we should address these challenges pragmatically, not polemically, as part of the broader question of making DebConf a success. When weighed against the cost of gathering people in one place from all over the world, the visa expenses are very small, and there are certainly things that DebConf could do to level the playing field: in addition to the local team providing visa assistance (as Allison has already commented, and which I would consider a normal part of any DebConf bid), we could also consider visa application fees a sponsorable travel expense just like plane tickets are. When you consider the map of Debian developer locations[1], I think it's obvious that we can be more cost-effective with our travel budget by sponsoring visas for developers to come into the US from Latin America, than by sponsoring plane tickets for developers in Canada and the US down to Venezuela. [1] http://www.debian.org/devel/developers.loc Oh, and just to throw in some numbers: according to [2], 825 of 920 active Debian developers (90%) live in countries whose citizens are eligible for travel to the US without a visa. That includes the 37 visa waiver program countries listed on [3], as well as the US and Canada. It does not include Mexico, for which (as you know) the US has its own particular system of visas valid for 10 years. [2] http://www.perrier.eu.org/weblog/2012/06/06 [3] http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/without/without_1990.html There are many good reasons to move the conference around from year to year: it removes the risk of burning out a local team, it gives us an opportunity to reach out to different local sponsors (avoiding to bleed any of them dry), and it lets us make the conference geographically fair to attendees in the aggregate. But these are factors we should consider because *they make for a better DebConf*, and not out of blind adherence to a "tradition" to never repeat a country. A policy to never repeat a country couldn't work indefinitely; sooner or later we would run out of unique countries with credible hosting bids. While we should still try to vary the hosting location, we should certainly not try to to enforce a "once per country" rule. As for Portland in particular, it's been 4 years since the last DebConf in the US. Taken altogether, we've had two DebConfs in South America (Porto Alegre, Mar del Plata); two in "Central" America (Oaxtepec, Managua); and two in "North" America (Toronto, New York). In terms of geographic equality, I think there's no clear reason to prefer one bid over the other. And Portland is over 3,000 km from either of the previous North American host cities; there's no overlap in terms of local teams with the previous conferences, and likely to be very little overlap with "local" sponsors. The pdf Allison linked to from the Portland State website provides information about additional rooms available and their (standard) rates. Any of the rooms shown there are potentially available for our use, it just depends how much money we have to spend and how much space we want. Can you clarify what figures you think we should be using for estimating attendance? In preparing the venue quote, I've gone from the statistics on attendance at DC10 in New York: http://debconf-data.alioth.debian.org/stats/old-dc10/rooms-by-date-2.txt - peak attendance (for people with properly-entered data) was 271 - attendance peaked mid-week (Tue-Thu); attendance the day of the opening plenary was 267, attendance the day of the closing plenary was 177 - not everyone who's present will attend the plenary - the plenary room can accomodate a few more people "standing room", beyond the 200 seated capacity - I have assumed the attendance in Portland will be slightly less than what it was in New York, due to geographic considerations. All things considered, then, I have the impression that the listed rooms would suffice for DebConf. But if you would like us to use different assumptions for attendance at different points during the week, we're happy to rework the bid accordingly. In that case, I think the best option would probably be to rent the ballroom (600 person capacity) for just the opening and closing plenaries. I avoided including this in the bid originally because I know the video team prefers not to have to move equipment around between rooms, so it's preferable to not use "special" rooms for only part of the time; however, the ballroom comes pre-equipped with a complete A/V setup, so if we need the use of a larger space for the plenaries we can probably make this work and avoid incurring huge added costs from renting space we're not using for the whole week. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/ slangasek(a)ubuntu.com vorlon(a)debian.org