[Foundation-l] Re: Bounties and expenses

Tue Jun 22 10:09:17 UTC 2004

On 06/22/04  at 02:32 AM, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> said:

> And, I don't think calling such meetings "perks" is an overstatement.  
> I've observed quite a few non-profit meetings, as well as meetings and 
> conferences in academia, and they rarely have much real work being 
> done.  They're social and networking events, and the most "real work" 
> that gets done is at best finding out about something that you make a 
> note of to look up and read later.  The actual real work gets done via 
> email or telephone (or both) either before or after the conferences.  H.
>  Cheney's recent email indicated he's had similar experiences on the 
> non-profit boards he's sat on, so this seems to not simply be my 
> personal experience.

I think these comments reflect a grave misunderstanding of the importance of meetings.

In the past, I've been involved in a number of EU-funded projects among at times quite disparate participants, and it was always a given that such projects -- after being approved for funding -- got off to a start with a meeting with everyone involved. Sometimes this was the only time the participants met; they then went back to their respective countries and spent the duration of the project working in their offices and communicating by email and telephone. But that initial face-to-face was critical; it isn't something that can be measured in cold person/hour metrics but rather reflects some as yet not entirely well-understood psychological truth: long-distance, distributed projects work better when the participants have first met. 

If Jimbo, Anthere, and Angela will be working closely together in the coming months and years, as appears to be the case, than it is entirely appropriate, no, *imperative* that they meet each other. I would therefore be in favor of Angela being reimbursed for her travel expenses to attend the Paris meeting.

V.