use Perl

• As a fellow committee member (Score:1)

  by btilly (5037) on 2008.02.21 22:47 (#61226) Journal

  I agree with you on the difficulty of finding grants that we're willing to fund. We see too few grants. Once you filter out ones that are poorly defined, were we're not inclined to believe the grantee can do, which duplicate existing work, are not travel or are poor value, well, you pretty much wind up with the list of what we fund. And it isn't very many.
  
  However if TPF looks to be getting too much money and this will be an ongoing problem, it is always easy to find ways to spend money. For instance we could say that we'll give out awards at each YAPC to someone present who has never received an award from TPF and is not part of TPF. The recipient of this award would be decided by the attendees of the conference. The result? We'd spend several thousand dollars a year on guaranteed good causes. TPF would get no flack about the decision making process. And my bet is that the money will generally prove to have been well-spent. (Both in terms of past and future accomplishments.)

  Reply to This

  • Re: (Score:2)

    by autarch (914)

    The grants committee has done a good job of picking grant recipients with the submissions it receives. As you imply, there's a lot of not-so-good submissions which don't get funded.
    
    I think that there could be more submissions if the nature of the grants were different. Specifically, I'd like to see grants aimed at funding a sabbatical from work for the recipients. Right now, the grants are more like little bonuses for doing a lot of work, as opposed to enough pay to live on while doing a lot of work.
    
    Of cour
    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Alias (5735)

      I'd happily apply for something like that...
      
      I'm currently trying to arrange a sabbatical to do the entire June to August conference season, with city visits/talks in between, and hacking on various useful and interesting stuff as I go.
      
      It means a pricey around the world ticket, no income for 3 months, and relying on being "hosted" in the various cities in order to try and keep expenses down.
      
      If any of those fall through and I start incurring hotel bills, or extra flights, or what have you, it gets ugly fast.
      
      A
      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Alias (5735)

        But of course, then we get down to favouritism again... since it would be my third grant...
    • Re: (Score:1)

      by btilly (5037)

      I was suggesting the awards as a way of reducing he bank balance and not of doing great things for the mission. (Though I do think it would likely help the mission.)