Policy-Discussion

[Jens Paul <cacert AT canyonsport.de>]

Hi!
> There were some problems with CeBIT organisation, mostly to 
> do with misplaced lines of communication.
>   

Misplaced lines of communications, lack of experience, missing mentoring 
and unclear financial status. Bt yes, we should not dwell on the past :-)

> 1.  Joergen Heine organises CeBIT 2008, starting this week.
>
>    a.  He is to be mentored in this project by Jens Paul, 
> who has a lot of experience in organising events.
>   

Oh, you are already putting some pressure on the poor mentor :-)

>    b.  There is a log of work to get through.  Lots of help 
> will be needed!
>   

>From my point of view we had the following situations / problems in 
the past, not only on CeBIT:

   * Those people willing to held during the event did most often a
     great job. Not much to complain there.

   * Some people who had some experience in organizing events seemed to
     be pissed off becuase an "unexperienced oranisator" was in charge
     instead off them. We should remember that our goal as an community
     is to get things done as good as possible with the available
     ressources and not to profile ourselves. Rather than to see it as
     a competition we should se it as a teaming!

   * In most cases I realized that the event organisator tried to deal
     with every aspect of the event. While it is possible to organize
     everything and assure people during smaller events, this is
     impossible for large events like CeBIT. If you organize such an
     event you should not be the person doing EVERYTHING, instead you
     should be more like a coordinator. During the event you should
     stay in the background and help those great guys in the front to
     work in an organized way. If you prefer to assure people, don't go
     for the job of the event organisator ...


>    c.  Organising a big event like CeBIT should take a year.
>   

You need to have a timeline in place and as soon as you realize that you 
cannot cope with you own timeline, alarm bells should ring. Escalate 
such issues as soon as possible so that others can jump in and help. A 
last minute escalation as we had it this year on CeBIT planning can help 
to get a few things done, but many have to be left behind. Remember: The 
early cry for help is the only successful one.

>    d.  Someone (else) should be responsible for coordinating 
> all events.  I guess this would be a global Event Officer?
>   

Agreed. This person should keep record of all upcoming events, he should 
ask all those event organisators how things are going, he can pass 
difficult issues (like organisator asking for budget, ...) to the 
appropriate decission makers and he should use all that great feedback 
from the organisator to build a single (!) document about event 
organisations. We already have some good stuff about that in the wiki 
which he should consolidate.

> 2.  The plan should start out with a planning figure of N 
> Assurers present every day.  That number might change, over 
> time, but it makes it easy to predict all sorts of other things.
>   

Until now we always did the the opposite direction. The organisators 
realized short before the event how many assurers were supposed to be 
present and they started to think about they could go with that bunch of 
people. Instead you should do it the opposite direction: First you 
should have a plan about how many assurers and other helpers you need 
for that particular event. If you do not get enough responses, cry out 
to the community. If you get too many (because of lack of room) 
responses you have to decide whether to reject more assurers or if you 
could use them in another way (for example: you can not only use 
assurers at the booth during CeBIT, you could also send them out to 
spread the word or you could implement a "book an assurer" concept or 
anything else). Just start planning this in advance and not during the 
event.

> 3.  Joergen will ask for budget to cover the costs.
>   

And we need such an approval in advance. It was far to late this time 
which crippled Juergens possibilities. Luckily those great guys present 
where willing to take some risk, but we should not rely on such things.

>    a.  It is the job of the rest of CAcert to get that 
> budget approved and delivered.  Jens will push the most!
>    b.  Some of the budget should be provided up front.
>    c.  Some mechanism is needed to make it usable:  bank 
> account, Verein, etc.
>   

That's one of the things "mentoring" means. Not "controlling" but 
helping on request with some particular tough battles.

>    d.  We need to explore some form of German vehicle 
> (Verein?  Association?) along the lines of the Dutch 
> organisation Oophaga to manage this.
>    e.  In theory, it should be possible to organise the 
> German community to self-fund CeBit.  It's large enough.
>   

If we had an association and could start getting donations early enough 
- YES. I know that some guys where trying to create a german 
association. As I am not aware of the names of those guys I kindly ask 
them to get in touch with me. Tnaks!

> 4.  The full planning and activity will cover, in the 
> fullness of time:
>
>     a.  accomodation
>     b.  travel (getting there, daily to accom)
>     c.  entrance
>     d.  communicating (always) with each Assurer
>     e.  printing (CAP, FAQ, flyer, business cards, badges...)
>     f.  promotional materials (mugs, etc)
>     g.  presentations
>     h.  booth
>     i.  electricity, net, cables, routers
>     j.  daily cycle
>     k.  minor and incidental costs
>     l.  training of new Assurers (materials, process)
>     m.  on-the-day dispute resolution
>     n.  contacts, foreign Assurers
>   

And more. But first let's Jürgen start his own list before we start 
adding to much :-)

> 5.  The Event Organisor is responsible for the Assurers, and 
> the Assurers are responsible for the Assurances!  The EO 
> does not do Assurances.
>
> The Event Organisor is responsible for everything else, 
> especially making sure that Assurers have good accomodation 
> and travel plans, well organised in advance.  Any delays in 
> supporting the Event Organisor bounce back to the Assurers: 
> if they do not knowing what is happening, they will not turn up.
>
> 6.  Joergen (with Jens, and everyone) should build up an 
> Event Handbook to collect the experiences over the next 
> year.  Everyone needs this!
>   
Agreed ....

OK guys, let's start to make CeBIT 2008 the brightest star on CAcerts 
internal "Walk of Fame"!

PS: The most important thing I missed on CeBIT 2007: international 
Assurers! I know that many assurers from outside germany have been on 
CeBIT. It would have been great if they had some some spare time to 
visit CAcert. It helps a lot to bring the community together worldwide, 
instead of creating isolated local communities!

Greetings
Jens
begin:vcard
fn:Jens Paul
n:Paul;Jens
org:CAcert Inc.
email;internet:cacert AT canyonsport.de
title:CAcert Education Officer
version:2.1
end:vcard