Bid process

DebConf venue bid process

Modifications to this process should be agreed with the competing bid teams.

If bid teams miss announced deadlines, this should not immediately disqualify them, but bid teams' apparent organisational skills, ability to work together effectively, and redundancy in case of absence, should all be taken into account during the decision process.

Bid submission

Bid teams are invited to describe their proposals at DebConfN-2. This is not a hard requirement, and bids can start work later than this, but it is helpful to everyone working on DebConf. Bid teams themselves can benefit from this as a milestone to encourage progress, and as an opportunity to gather comments and suggestions before their proposals become too firm.

Bid teams submit proposals by December 1 of that year. Teams are free to submit additional materials, but the core of a bid is responses to questions determined in advance by the DebConf team. Bids should be posted to the DebConf wiki, and announced on the DebConf mailing list.

Once a bid has been posted, everyone is encouraged to read the materials, and to ask questions about them on the debconf-team list. Bid teams should give any additional information requested, and update their bid pages in the wiki to reflect significant points. Bid teams remain free to change aspects of their bids, but at this stage details such as costs should be researched immediately for any new proposals, so that it remains possible to see full and accurate bid information.

Venue decision

Dates and times for the bid status and venue decision meetings are arranged by the DebConf Committee, in consultation with the bid teams. The DebConf Committee is made up of the delegated DebConf chairs and additional members recruited by the Chairs from those with a long-term interest in helping organise DebConf.

The date, time, and procedure for the meetings should be announced well in advance, along with a list of the current members of the DebConf Committee.

Before the bid status meeting, bid teams send a status update to the mailing list, including again pointers to their materials.

Bid status meeting

Bid status meeting agenda:

• Introductions from teams and their members.

• Questions from teams about the process, and about what others suggest they try to do on any uncertain aspects or potential problems.

• Questions to teams, if there are still unanswered issues.

After this meeting, bid teams answer questions on the mailing list, where they weren't already answered during the meeting. Others raise any new questions or ask for clarifications as necessary.

Before the venue decision meeting

If any DebConf Committee members feel that there is no bid they could support at this stage, they should explain on the debconf-team list what problems they see and how they could be addressed. If there is a widespread feeling among Committee members that none of the bids are ready, the second decision meeting will be delayed.

Before the decision meeting, bid teams again send status updates, with pointers to any additional materials since the first meeting.

For the decision meeting, bid teams prepare:

• A description of how their bid meets each of the points on the priority list.

• A description of the weak points in their own bids.

• A description of the strong points in other bids.

Bid teams may opt to keep these materials private until the decision meeting.

Venue decision meeting

The bid/venue decision is to happen by the end of January of the year prior to that DebConf

Venue decision meeting agenda:

• Quick introduction from each team, and quick questions to each team. Ideally by now everyone should already be clear on the bid statuses.

• Bid teams post links to the materials they have prepared describing how their bid meets points on the the priority list, the weak points in their own bids, and the strong points in other bids.

• We work through the priority list, considering each item for each bid, and noting areas where there is consensus that bids are stronger than each other. This stage is intended to ensure that no important topic is missed, but even if there is agreement on each bid's advantages, coming to a decision isn't simply a mathematical calculation: some aspects are more important than others. There should be an agreed time limit for discussion of each point.

• There is a period of chaired discussion of the competing bids' merits, with opportunity for anyone present to speak, during which the meeting chairs seek consensus on a decision. The DebConf Committee members should participate in this discussion. There should be an agreed time limit on the discussion.

• The DebConf Committee members are asked to vote to decide which bid to take forward. If there is already clear consensus, this may simply mean voicing their assent to the apparent decision. If there are still more than two bids in contention, a formal vote (using Debian's normal voting methods) may have to be run after the meeting, but the vote should be held and the result announced as soon as possible. Committee members who are part of a bid team should announce this on the debconf-team list before the meeting, and abstain from voting.

Resources for bids

There are some resources which DebConf offers a bid team (besides the wiki!) to prepare your bid:

• You can have a mailinglist within lists.debconf.net (debconfXY-BID@lists.debconf.net - like debconf13-mars@l.dc.n)

• If you need/want more than just the wiki to prepare, you can also have a webpage within debconf.net. (Though you probably want to spend more of your energy in perfecting the bid than preparing a webpage.)

Hosting your list and site on DebConf resources means that a.) everything is together in one location, easy to find and b.) it's archived well beyond the lifetime of any bid (DebConf has bad experiences with losing data between years in the past) and c.) it's a very easy transition from debconf.net over to debconf.org once your bid has won.

Send a mail to admin@debconf.org if you're interested.