I know this is a long email, but I'd encourage everyone involved to fill
out the survey about their availability for the planning meeting this
summer: http://www.doodle.com/6z3z2zsd9yzvyi9n
-s
On 4/1/2012 10:38 AM, STEPHEN JACOBS wrote:
Thanks Mel!
What follows is some additional background, stuff that needs to be done moving
forward, the budget, a proposed future structure and thoughts around a POSSE
retreat around the Boston area in mid-June.
As some of you have experienced, working with the current group within Red Hat
charged with POSSE’s budget is a struggle. to get us to the current state of
an acknowledged intention to provide a budget of $35k has taken numerous emails
and between 10-15 calls to Singapore on my end alone, and likely similar
efforts on Mel's behalf.
The good (but as yet unofficial) news is that it seems this will move over to a
new division sometime during this RH fiscal year. Leslie Hawthorne is one of
the new hires for this new group. While the Comm Arch and Education stuff is
not officially embedded in this group yet, their goals are related and such a
move would make sense. Fingers crossed.
Moving Forward in the Interim
In the meantime here is the lay of the land we were given by the current
administrator.
1. There must be a cumulative report/business case document created to cover
POSSE’s accomplishments to date and its plans moving forward to achieve funding
for next year. This document should be completed to be handed to whoever will
be responsible for POSSE’s budget going forward in December. Mel and I don’t
have an issue with this, it’s needed not only for Red Hat but also for TOS' own
research into POSSE’s effectiveness and to allow us to seek
additional/alternative funding for POSSE going forward.
2. Whatever POSSE’s schedule is moving forward, it must be designed to well
accommodate international school years, not just US (one of the reasons for the
long view of our given proposed calendar in Mel’s email)
While RH is willing to give POSSE’s budget to an external entity this year,
this may be a one-year exception. Personally for POSSE’s sake, I hope this is
not the case. Red Hat’s March to March fiscal year, with $ that vanish at the
end of the year if unspent, has made it difficult to run the whole site CFP
process and promote confirmed POSSEs to academic institutions in time for
summer for US schools.
The plans detailed in Mel’s previous emails are the ones we believe will allow
POSSE to be most successful in reaching academics moving forward.
The Budget:
You’ll note that the $35k mentioned is a little less than the $40k from last
year. It also doesn’t reflect the fact that Red Hat had Mel and Sebastian
running administrative parts of POSSE and teaching some of them as well, so
there were probably another $20-$35k worth of “invisible sunk costs” put into
POSSE to make it run that we done have now. This point was made repeatedly to
the current RH group, but no success this year in getting more $.
In the meantime, to get any budget at all, we made commitments to RH and to
TOS/POSSE as per earlier list traffic to do infrastructure work, create a
significant report, etc. So, here’s what Mel and I have come up with as POSSE
To-Do’s for this summer…
1. Revision, restructuring, etc of existing POSSE materials and on-line
information. This could be done as part of the TOS wiki or could be done as
something stand-alone that TOS links to. Up for discussion as to
implementation.
2. Creation of some other tech infrastructure, registration databases, etc to
allow POSSE to run more efficiently in the future with less hands-on work of
the type that Mel and Sebastian have had to do in the past.
3. Creation of at least one draft, and ideally a final draft, of the report
we’ll need to give Red Hat in December.
Mel will be lead on at least the first two of these as she knows the stuff best
and there may still be some stuff in her head we need to get out of there.
She’ll be relying on the rest of the POSSE community to help get these things
done, especially on item #3.
The goal is that by the end of the summer she should be able to walk away from
POSSE entirely if need be and still have it have a future and run smoothly.
This will also enable us to change POSSE’s relationship to Red Hat in the
future if need be.
First use of those budget $ will be related to infrastructure and transition.
It will pay Mel for her time getting this done after classes are over for her.
It will hire some student staff from RIT this summer to get the work done,
where Remy Decausemaker can supervise them and make sure it’s solid. (Note:
Remy is paid by me and RIT full-time for my FOSS efforts and his supervision
will not come out of the $35k from RH for POSSE.)
Second use of the budget will be for deployments themselves and for a part-time
student during the year to work with POSSE deployment sites, assist with
reimbursements, and promote POSSE across social media.
I’m assuming we’ll have at least $20k for POSSE deployments, and probably more.
If the summer does cost all of $15k it won’t be out of line with what Mel has
estimated those “hidden administrative costs” were over previous years.
If the summer work doesn’t get done, there is no future short-term future of
POSSE. The good news is that when all that work is done we’ll then be in great
shape. We’ll have a solid infrastructure, and a process and calendar to
announce the POSSE site CFPs in October at FIE and full schedules of POSSEs at
SIGCSE for summer 2013-2014 POSSE season, and going forward afterwards. J
Proposed POSSE Process/Organizational Structure.
For this transitional (and hopefully on-going) method of POSSE
planning/organization/operation Mel and I propose a three-legged stool…
A. POSSE Organization: This group would act as a board that oversees POSSE
in general and handles things like the annual CFP process, matching POSSE
faculty to POSSE sites, deciding the finalized schedule, etc. A subset would
be engaged as the applications committee for a given year
B. POSSE Sites: These approved sites handle their own site logistics,
admissions process (their approved applications got to applications committee
for sign off) faculty transportation and housing logistics, etc.
C. POSSE Administration: Deals with reimbursements and infrastructure issues. If RH
returns to their normal POSSE process, this goes away. If at some point down the road
POSSE becomes its own 501c3, this also goes away. For the moment, this serves a useful
function and gets certain advantages by being attached to a university lab structure
(FOSS@RIT now, if this continues long term, perhaps other universities take turns) in
terms of existing infrastructure, RH and others being able to "gift"the $ and
write them off, etc.
There’s a lot to discuss here, and in the other sections above and so…
POSSE Retreat?
Mel and I both believe that it would be extremely beneficial for people with a
deep and abiding interest in POSSE to get together for a day, or half a day, to
kick all of this stuff around, firm up the details, build a spine for the
report to RH, etc.
One opportunity is for us to get together in the Boston area. I need to be in
Boston the evening of 6/13 and the day of 6/14 to present at the New Media
Consortium Conference at MIT. I can stay later and get together with people
6/15 or 6/16 or possibly come in to town earlier though I’ll have to change
some other plans to do so. Timing is good as it could essentially kick off all
the work for the rest of the summer.
I’ve got a doodle poll posted at the link below, with the Yes, No, If Need Be
options to asses people’s ability to do this. Mine are essentially yes for
Friday the 15th and Saturday the 16th, no for Thursday the 14th and if need be
for the earlier part of the week.
http://www.doodle.com/6z3z2zsd9yzvyi9n
Thanks for all your time and attention to all this.
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