Volunteer coordination and outreach/Travel sponsorship

Guidelines for applicants and reviewers of travel sponsorship requests. This is not a policy, but a set of principles to help making objective decisions under common and transparent criteria.

The factor of proximity
Proximity is a basic principle that influences all the rest. There is a correlation between travel distances and travel costs. We want to encourage local participation in our events, including contributors from near territories. Therefore, the criteria below should be applied with increased strictness as travel costs increase.

While this might be a problem from contributors living far from the usual centers of activity, it will also help identifying regions where more local activities should be organized.

Promoted

 * Participants with a plan to teach others at the event

Discouraged

 * Participants without a solid track in our tech community metrics AND without a sharp plan fitting in the program of the event. If someone has not been minimally involved in the tech community before the event, the risk of overestimating the goals to achieve at the event is high.


 * New contributors whose only history in our tech community is a paid internship. We believe the chances of having contributors' motivations distorted by economical benefits are high. Also, both OPW and GSoC participants can already claim up to $500 (from GNOME administrators or Google Open Source Programs Office, respectively) to participate in an event.