5) About other suggestions on structure & how organizations should functions?

     "Working committee & Directors will consider your suggestion and will come up appropriate decisions."

Regards,

Mani

On Thu, Jul 5, 2018 at 7:14 PM qua non <akshayaurora@gmail.com> wrote:

TLDR;

1) form a new organization to avoid issues with existing ones

2) Let's get payments directly from sponsors to vendors solving immediate issue with PyCon 2018

3) Let's work on making a organization with a good structure right now instead of later.

4) Let's involve the community in this whole process.

That's the gist of what is below.

I would like to shed some light on the situation AFROST is in.

Vipin & I, were among the directors(we helped form the org) of the company when it started out, the main goal at the time was to support open source communities.

However as time went by it became clear that; that was not really the case, AFROST has as yet not done anything to support any community in any manner what so ever(look at the accounts they are "clean" even after more than a year). This is despite numerous opportunities for the same and despite me and Vipin explicitly asking for such support. The org was more interested in applying for grants, activities that would be financially positive.

Needless to say both Vipin & I resigned about 2 months back.

Existing liabilities:

There are MOU and MOA with IODA and AFROST which were done while filing for some international grants, that have some responsibilities on AFROST to take over certain tasks under those MOU/MOA. 

There are legal proceedings between IODA and The Organizers of Global Blockchain Conference that does involve AFROST due to it's close ties and collaboration with IODA and the fact that some of the Global Blockchain Conference organizers were also part of AFROST at the time. 

Form a new Organization! It would be better in the long run.

Urgent Issues:

PSSI get's dissolved and does not renew beyond 7th July, so::

1) It needs to transfer existing money to some one who can help with PyCon India 2018

    - Option 1: PSSI can pay existing money they have directly to vendors for this year which solves the urgency issue.

      Cons: Involves a little bit more legwork trouble.

      Pros: This has worked for PyCon in the past

    - Option 2: PSSI can transfer money to a existing Org

      Cons: Existing liabilities and structure of org could come bite us.

      Pros: It's faster and given current urgency maybe the best solution given the timeframe.

2) We need a organization that can raise invoices for sponsors to support PyConIndia 2018

  - Option 1: Form a new non profit organization:

    Cons:  This could take a bit of time 

    Pros:  Offers a `Clean Slate` where we know there would be no issues.

  - Option 2: Get Vendors for PyCon India to raise invoices directly to the sponsors. 

    Cons: Difficult to coordinate but still doable.

    Pros: This has historically worked out quite nicely for PyCon India.

My Suggestion would be to take the option of getting the Sponsors and PSSI to directly pay to vendors. 

This solves all the urgent issues and allows the rest of the community to work on making a formal organization properly without effecting PyCon India 2018 .

On Thu, Jul 5, 2018 at 12:01 AM Noufal Ibrahim KV <noufal@nibrahim.net.in> wrote:

Hi Mani,
   I have some reservations about this but given the situation, it's the
best way forward.

We have a habit of sweeping things under the rug for the sake of, "Current Situation".

It would be hard but let's do this, "Right" now.  So we don't have such situations later on.

 

    To avoid the mistakes with IPSS and PSSI, I think it's prudent to
keep the charter of this new organization as small as possible to limit
the damage it can do.

Maybe the organization was not structured properly or tasks outgrew the org.

It would be better to spend some time and structure the new organization so it's better than before.

 

All of the PSSIs goals were noble (support
multiple conferences, stipend for sending people for conferences abroad,
etc) but I think the effort needed to keep all this under control was
under estimated and that led to many ad-hoc decisions and the overall
organisation unwavering.

Let's outline the goals  and outline them publicly, list out the tasks and what it would take to manage them.

Many people here are experienced product designers.

Let's put our heads together and do this correctly.

1. let's outline the procedure as it was before, including task lists and their flows.

    This would have to be done by those who were part of the organization till now.

2. Identify issues with the current system.

    This would have to be a open survey as the organizers definitely do not know all the failings.

3. Figure out what parts can be automated so it does not fall on a few to do all the tasks

You would be surprised by all the tasks that can be automated and the number of people available to help out.

Many open organizations  are moving to truly open everything being automated and put up for public consumption through blockchain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_autonomous_organization

I will start a new thread for the organizational part if people are interested in that.

Regards

Akkshay