Fedora-Council/tickets ticket #419: Reviving contributor hackfests in 2023

@jflory7 filed Fedora-Council/tickets ticket #419. Discuss here and record votes and decisions in the ticket.

Ticket text:

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Plus a billion to the concept. I think we should focus on in-person hackfests because virtual ones can happen without much support from us.

In order to make the process fair, I think we should have an annual proposal period and select which hackfests to fund out of that year’s budget. The downside is that requires a lot of foresight. On the other hand, it will make sure we’re funding hackfests that advance our strategy and not just whichever ones ask first.

I would agree. I still have a hard time conceptualizing a virtual hackfest as something that wouldn’t also be known as “a miserable multi-hour video call.” In-person events are also things that would require more assistance and coordination by the Council.

We could build a process to trial a new approach starting in the F39 release cycle and “deploy it” then. The challenge in the meantime is that I have to come up with a budget request Real Soon Now™ and there likely won’t be much time for an open bidding process.

Alternatively, we could commit to running three of these in 2023 without knowing all the details today, and then have an open bid process where teams could submit for funding and support to run a hackfest in early 2023.

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This has my vote. Let’s plan for it. If we end up not having the bids we’re expecting, we can look for specific things to drive in the second half of the year — or repurpose the funds.

Seems straightforward. In the meantime, I am going to lightly pencil in the option for three hackfests as an aspiration, and we can finalize a decision by the next Council meeting.

Cosign. If the “$100 event” process taught us anything, its’ that we’re going to have an under-request problem, not an over-request.