Hey team! wow Devcon was awesome wasn’t it? So was the DAOist, Schelling Point, ETH LATAM, ETH Bogotá and Sustainable Blockchain Summit! One hell of a ride in Colombia.
Many, many incredible highlights and value created for Giveth, of which we will see the fruits hopefully in the coming weeks.
A few of us Givethers came to Colombia and rented a house specifically to attend the myriad of conferences. This was myself (@mitch), @OyeAlmond , @Cotabe and @hanners717. I would like to kindly ask for reimbursement for the cost of accommodation for our stay in Bogotá.
Accommodations for 15 nights in Bogotá - 1221.61 CAD = $887.14 USD
80% reimbursement for full-time contributors = $709.712 USD in GIV from the nrGIV
Pay to Mitch
0x826976d7C600d45FB8287CA1d7c76FC8eb732030
I understand that none of our activities were official sponsorships - to that end we are not asking for reimbursement for travel costs nor event ticket costs.
The house in Bogotá was also our working station to keep our work in track Also was a meeting point for other fellow contributors to come by and co-work .
Excited to put in practice everything that I was able to build in Bogotá! Specially strength Giveth presence for the following events. Ty @mitch
Was this consider this paid time off, or were you compensated fully for your hours? What actions were taken to use this opportunity to advance Giveth?
I think we need better processes for reimbursements, and I think that - in order to be eligible for conference reimbursement & for being paid to go to the conference - (in general, in the future) we should make a forum post where each contributor has a chance to explain why their conference attendance should be considered “work” (unless they managed to also just work all their hours some other way).
Some team members do a lot of work networking for giveth, preping talks/interviews, attracting fundraisers etc., some team members do a lot of juggling to stay on top of their work online to make space to enjoy the conference, some team members just hang out, attend talks, go to parties, etc. These shouldn’t be reimbused/compensated the same.
We spent a lot of money on Eth Barcelona, and it was kind of a hit to our funds…
I don’t feel strongly about this proposal (although it also doesn’t seem fair to reimbuse this one and not reimburse mateo, carlos, ashley, me & griff), in general you guys are all awesome but this reminds me of a larger issue and I want to put those thoughts here.
While reading the title of it (Giveth team) I was expecting to see a full blown breakdown of costs similarly to what we had at ETH BCN. This proposal seems to be an isolated case for specific expense of certain team members. I’m always in favour for reimbursing travel and other conference costs when we attend as a team, and I’d support this proposal if this was the case.
Lauren made some good points about a larger issue we should address, and maybe it’s time to discuss a general policy for reimbursing conferences. Following on that, I don’t think we should go too much into details and classify tiers of compensation based on who’s doing what at the conference. If we go as a team, everyone should be reimbursed, otherwise we’d need someone to police around that. It should be in everyone’s interest to do the best to promote Giveth, and have a lot of fun at the events. Besides, many great opportunities arise from hanging out with people and networking, even at parties!
I’d personally rather not be reimbursed if someone is going to monitor me all the time and judge my “conference performance” afterwards.
I can say for at least @OyeAlmond , @mitch , @hanners717 we were working full hours during our whole stay in Bogota, most of which was carried out in the airbnb we had rented.
@Cotabe delivered a talk, Almond and I did some serious networking and I attended some talks that provided me with new ideas to improve our dapp security, our UX practices and how to improve our tokenomics. I’ve shared some of these with you in the relevant channels.
I’m not sure how far I should go to “prove” that our accomodations reimbursement was worth it, so I’ll leave it there.
Agree some clear practices or guidelines would go a long way.
To this point if any of the above feel like making a case for their accommodation reimbursement they are free of course to make a post as well!
Yeah I think this is the thing though! People who work hard during conferences should be reimbursed & people who hang out … well, they shouldn’t be punished, but if they can’t make a case for why their attendance was more than a vacation… then they should call it a vacation.
I will try to make a more concise forum post (or I’ll try to delegate it) about this, in general, to not make mitch’s simple reimbursement too much of an arguement. We should really sort this out before the next big conference, which I imagine will be ETH Denver in Feb.
Didn’t mean to put you on the spot mitch, I know you are all rockstars. It just feels weird to have this isolated “just these 4 people” reimbursement request. I know I can make another, but it also just doesn’t feel right.
I also think this post hits at a larger discussion about conference attendance for Giveth and us needing to create clearer policies and expectations.
What if there was a limit of conference attendance, (1, 2, 3, etc…) and then after the limited amount each contributor needed to write a proposal, stating their purposes for attending the conference? (Speaking, partnership, funding, recruiting, etc…)
Or what if each contributor has an annual “allowance” of conference attendance and they can spend it on whichever conference they’d like to attend? Or on approved conferences only.
I think meeting people in person is valuable, both team members and other people in the community, because unexpected bonds and partnerships can happen.
Thought i’d jump in as we at Aragon have had similar discussions, sometimes tense ones, and maybe share some of our processes (also looking to learn how the Giveth community manages this in the future!)
We try and map out (if possible) the entire year of “target” conferences, or at least 2 quarters in advance and select who will be going to those conferences to represent Aragon for work. This is based on a budget determined before for “events & conferences”. It’s pre-determined. Anyone who is not selected (people can also ask to go and then a decision is made within the guild) to go to represent Aragon, pays for it themselves, IF they are approved to go by their guild steward (if this is on working time).
There are 2 types of deliverables:
Bigger picture: General OKR’s or KPI’s for the guilds (it’s currently quarterly but might soon change)
Individual conferences: We ask attendees to submit a review of the conference from their perspective for others to learn and to input all “meetings” etc, into a CRM for transparency, learning, and follow up action items.
An example at DEVcon: another growth team member and I had 25 official “meetings” over the 5 days. All the information is recorded. The few tech team members that went had far less meetings but gave an update to the rest of the guilds about learnings from the talks, etc. They also attended several meetings with us (which I update for them) if they are more deeply tech related.
I find that pre-determining who should go and why for the DAO or organisation, with some deliverables, is a better methodology that reduces tension as well.
Edit: we are working on a system where everyone gets the opportunity to go once a year regardless of if attending falls within their overall deliverables. Those who “need” to go don’t have a cap, it’s simple: are they meeting their goals, are they following expenditure rules, and are they being sensible in planning the years conferences and events?
Also was a meeting point for other fellow contributors to come by and co-work .