[wsfii-discuss] situation re sending invites?

Mon Aug 8 19:47:18 UTC 2005

hello,

Where do we stand on the invite-list situation, post the positive
flurry on this list last week? I liked Rufus' invite draft,
especially the bit inviting people to set up their own WSFIIs: 
http://okfn.org/wsfii/wiki/WsfiiProvisionalInvite  

http://okfn.org/wsfii/wiki/ShouldInvite seems to partially encompass
three overlapping sets of people:

1. people we're hoping to sponsor travel expenses for
2. people we're inviting to speak
3. people we're inviting because we want them to be there

Is ShouldInvite intended to be comprehensive for set 1 but not 2 or 3?

I've "sounded out" most of the people on the nominal geodata list,
to find out if they're free and willing, but not made formal invites
nor formal offers of expenses.  

- Should i as stream organiser send the WsfiiProvisionalInvite 
to these people, with an extra header to people we want or need
to fund travel for, asking them to reply ASAP if they will need
travel expenses paid?

- Who's taking responsibility for inviting and contact-managing
  people who don't "fit" in specific streams nor are speaking,
  who are only in set 3? 

There are a few people currently on the 'geodata' list who don't
really know or care about geodata; they're second-wave community
wireless people doing interesting things with captive portals.
They won't necessarily be interested in or have experience relevant
to the 'W4D' book sprint, either. 

A few of these people will have come thousands of miles, and it
seems silly not to create space for an activity in which they want
to participate during the workshop week. That's why we created the
'wsfii-dev' list, to try and engineer something technically, that
represented the "crossing the streams, finding the edges" 
drive of WSFII as an event; not just "workshopping new techniques"
in their own domains, but specifically crossing over domains.

Finally I feel bound to mention this once, then hold my peace;
i see a lamentable paucity of female names on this list. It would
be good to think harder about attempting to counteract the prevailing
cultural forces; the only way we can help fix balance issues, 
in hacker culture, in ghetto policy culture, is by actually addressing them...

-jo