[Ambassadors] Fedora EMEA e.v. (was Re: What Fedora makes sucking ...)

Max Spevack mspevack at redhat.com
Tue Dec 9 15:53:19 UTC 2008


On Tue, 9 Dec 2008, Christoph Wickert wrote:

> This is why I'm surprised to hear the numbers from Max. I thought the 
> EMEA e.V. is the legal entity for the whole budget given by RH and not 
> just 6000 €. Maybe Max can elaborate this is little?

Sure, I'll try.

First, look at things from the perspective of the Red Hat Community 
Architecture team, which I am the budget manager for.

We do a bunch of things with our money -- the details, as many people 
have seen, are on the Fedora wiki at CommunityArchitecture/Expenses.

One of the things that my team does is make sure that the budget for 
Fedora events and swag all over the world exists, and that it gets into 
the hands of the right people.

Worldwide, this budget is usually somewhere around $15k USD per quarter.

This happens a few different ways.

(1) I pay for stuff with my Red Hat credit card, file an expense report, 
and note the amount in my budget calculations.

(2) Ambassadors spend money, send me their receipts, and get reimbursed 
with PayPal.  This happens a lot in North America, and it occasionally 
happens in EMEA.

IMPORTANT POINT NUMBER ONE:  Some of the EMEA expenses for the Fedora 
Project are reimbursed directly to Ambassadors by me without ever going 
through Fedora EMEA e.V.

IMPORTANT POINT NUMBER TWO:  Some of the EMEA expenses for the Fedora 
Project are paid directly by Red Hat, without ever going through Fedora 
EMEA e.V.  For example, the Fedora 9 and Fedora 10 CDs that are made in 
the Munich office and charged to my budget.

(3) Ambassadors are reimbursed by folks like Sankarshan (in India) or 
Harish (in APAC).  Sankarshan or Harish file expense reports, which are 
counted against my budget.

So, let me summarize:

* Our budget for Fedora marketing/events/swag is spent all over the 
world, and it is spent in many different ways.
* Sometimes, people in EMEA are reimbursed directly by me via PayPal, or 
even via cash, and they just hand me their receipts.

Moving on...

The value that the Fedora EMEA e.V. non-profit provides is the legal 
entity and the ability for US Dollars (which is what my budget is in) to 
be transferred to Euros, and for those Euros to be transferred to either 
Ambassadors, or other vendors (like the people who made our shirts) via 
simple payment methods.

A lot of our Ambassadors in EMEA can't take Paypal.  If I do personal 
bank transfers from my US bank, Red Hat gets angry at me and sometimes 
doesn't pay me back -- this is the problem we have with funding LATAM 
many times.

By filling out the paperwork which allows Red Hat to give some money to 
Fedora EMEA e.V. (which is a legal entity), I can say "well, there's 
probably 3000 EUR worth of costs coming up that are going to be spread 
around EMEA.  Let's make one transfer to the Fedora EMEA e.V. group, and 
then we can pay out all the money we need to from there."

Does this make things more clear?

We start with the total budget for Fedora events & marketing.  Call it 
$X.  From there, we end up with a sub-set that will be spent in EMEA, 
call it $Y.

Some amount of $Y will be spent either directly by me -- like paying for 
the hotel at FAD EMEA.  But some amount of $Y can be handed to Fedora 
EMEA e.V. (call this $Z).  Fedora EMEA e.V. holds on to $Z until it is 
ready to go to whatever its final location is.

==============

The whole idea of "membership" is what is causing the problem here.

Fedora EMEA e.V. is a "hack", albeit a perfectly legal one, that simply 
makes it easier to move Fedora's resources from one part of the world to 
another, with a minimum of headaches.

If it's doing its job properly, people shouldn't even know that it 
exists, and they shouldn't even care.

Maybe the best thing to do is to figure out what the smallest 
"membership" requirements are for the group to maintain its legal 
status, and implement it that way in 2009.

==========

I cannot be more clear about this final point:  The Fedora Project *does 
not want money* from people who are already contributing their time and 
effort.  People already pay out of their own pocket sometimes to travel 
to events.  A "membership fee" for Fedora EMEA e.V. isn't something that 
I care about at all.

Having a way to turn my budget of dollars into Euros, and to get those 
Euros to the people who need them, is what I care about.  That is what 
is important.

It's a way to prevent me from being the "middle man" between the Fedora 
budget and all the Ambassadors worldwide, which causes me a lot of 
headaches.  I can't pay for all of Fedora's costs out of my own pocket, 
and then wait to see which of those costs Red Hat is willing to 
reimburse me for.

--Max


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