DEFNA Interviews - Robert Roskam and Drew Winstel

Is it is

Speaker 1: I'm Rao Ross. I'm a staff engineer at Martian and I've been the last year in 2019 I was, I guess, a co-chair with Drew. very much in the background of the year before I was the chair.

Speaker 2: Yeah, and Andrew Winstall, I've been working various Python jobs for years now. Currently, excuse me. So in 2019, as Robert said, I was co-shair with him and I will be doing the same role again in 2020. Um be my fourth DjangoCon this year, so I've been an attendee, a speaker, and now an organizer.

Speaker 1: Yeah, my first Django Con was uh the Philly one. Uh I think that's twenty sixteen. Might be twenty.

Speaker 2: That sounds right. Um my first was uh 17 in um Spokane.

Speaker 1: Okay, so it's probably 2016.

Speaker 3: So can you guys talk about about like the name opportunity grants? I mean versus versus just uh uh just like financial aid and where does it come from and all that

Speaker 1: I'll let you take that one for uh through because you know it.

Speaker 2: Sure. Uh so you know with the f name financial aid it conjures images of lengthy applications back from you know having to apply to college in the US and things like that. And we wanted to kind of fall in with more the uh with some of the our more progressive conferences that we like to follow. Like a I think we got the name Opportunity Grants from JacoCon Europe in 2018, 2019 Sasha with the campaign to uh change that name over from financial aid to opportunity grants because it um kind of conveys more of a it's an opportunity rather than just us just, you know, helping you. It's for it's about you getting the money and being able to attend the conference rather than just Yeah, some lengthy bureaucratic mess.

Speaker 3: How much is is is there a specific amount of money reserved for that every year or it depends on how many How many people are asking for aid or uh

Speaker 2: DEFNA allocates a cent butt percentage of the butt a cent budget each year. Um it depends on the how how much money DEFNA is able to rake in from sponsorships and um donations and things like that. I think our budget last year was around twenty thousand dollars for twenty nineteen.

Speaker 1: Yep, and we also um applied for grants from other organizations that we partner with. partner with uh and they allocate that budget.

Speaker 2: Yeah both uh the Jenga Software Foundation and the Python Software Foundation chipped in last year for example.

Speaker 3: What are usually the type of of person that that applies for these grants or I mean is it different in the type of of people that that have been applying for this grant versus the type of of uh attendees that you guys would like to get to apply for these grants?

Speaker 1: I can't really answer that question because one of the things we intentionally don't gather is demographics. Um so uh one of the things that we don't want people to think is uh plays into it is that there's any kind of bias in the way that the funds get granted. It should be uh mainly uh on the the the scripted text on what they say they're asking for because as it has to uh as it operates, as it tends to operate, uh the um uh many times people just ask for they provide very little description of anything whatsoever. And we have to weigh that description against what other descriptions are of what their situation is, what their need is.

Speaker 1: And Uh we don't need uh any other bias applied to us.

Speaker 2: Absolutely agreed. Yeah, we um Yeah, as you said, we don't uh collect demographics for that reason. We just like to people to express themselves. This is why we want to come to DjangoCon. This is what I hope to learn from it. And uh this is w what makes this is why I want to be here. You know, it's about it's about the attendee, not so much whether they checking up boxes.

Speaker 1: One of the things uh I will uh add uh to that is uh I I think it is like a a relay question sometimes people uh thinking that if they're coming internationally um or if they're coming coming from uh some other country that that will be like a a negative effect to to the application. It it's uh the uh the The ask itself, the thing that gets weighted the most more than anything else is them explaining why on earth they want to come. Like, you know, what what is it Are they been using Django? Are they brand new to Django? How are they related to us? Are they not related at all to us? They just like tell it tell

Speaker 1: tell a story about what what their situation is. Because many occasions there's it's mostly just just a handful of words like I would like to comment some person. And that we have to weigh that against someone else who's saying, uh, I can barely afford to pay rent, but I really want to come. And that person is coming uh, you know, from a distance inside the US, that makes it equal cost to someone coming from somewhere in Central America, right? So

Speaker 2: Yeah, like for flights to the west coast of the United States, a flight from the east coast to the US is not that different from, like you said, Central America. The costs are roughly the same in that regard. So yeah, it's and also the thing that tends to um or that was really kind of plus in the case dimension being involved in local communities. Like if they are active in their local Python group, DOJO group, or they, you know, they want to take that knowledge they learn video that they have locally that helps us to help spread the word about gender com and what we do who we are and uh the knowledge that they gain hopefully.

Speaker 3: So that's that's uh that's actually uh a really good point of view uh because i i wanted i i wanted to see if there was like maybe one or two questions that you guys think that any attendee like if if anybody answer yes to to one or two questions then then they will say something like okay I'm uh I should apply for a for a uh an opportunity grant right like how how do I know as an attendee that uh that I should apply for one right.

Speaker 2: Uh for me I would say if you think you need help going, say you're not sure if your company will pay for you to go, if you're say you can get if you can get funding from outside, like from your job. Things like that, take that of course. But if you need help for whatever reason, go ahead and apply. Worst thing that happens is we is we can't find room for you to budget.

Speaker 3: So and and what about the the uh the application itself? Like what are you guys I mean uh feel free to talk as much in depth about about this as as you like or or if you just wanna brush the the surface that's okay. Uh but like what are the different things that you take into consideration like because I I mean I I I guess that it's very difficult to weigh like one application versus another because there's no it's not comparing apples versus apples right It's just like m widely different contexts.

Speaker 2: Yeah, very much so. Um For me, uh I'd like to see that they they've shown some effort in terms of looking up what the cost will be. You know, do it just like doing some cursory Google Flight searches or whatever travel agent you like to use. So you have a rough idea of how much of a price will cost rather than just saying I want two thousand dollars, saying it'll cost twice with me about this much, hotels will be about this much, and then and so forth for whatever uh cost they may have that that way they can that they show that they've made an effort to show that they want to come and they should they're not just blindly asking for money.

Speaker 1: I would say that's probably uh a good way of like framing it another way I would added is that um no promises going forward on methods used but in the past uh if you only need uh uh uh a hundred bucks. Right?

Speaker 2: That's which is a funny ass, but go ahead. But yes.

Speaker 1: Yeah. It's if if you have if you have a small if you have a very small ass, right? If you can um The smaller asks do tend to get a slightly better weight because we can fit more of them in. And our goal is to make as many people attend as possible. So uh once we have uh I think it might be appropriate to talk to this we go through a blind review round where we just rate the uh the merit of each ask and we have several people To uh rate the the ask itself, and then presently we just take highest score first and just begin allocating until we run out of budget. And then we start to have the hard choices of like This person's asking for $3,000.

Speaker 1: That is more than 10% of the budget, but there are three people below this person. And we can get all those people in if you just deallocate this other person. We have this that's where the the hard part half hits. Uh and so we have to make choices about what we want to do and sometimes we begin um playing with other things like uh what kind of thing it was two years ago. uh two years ago where we introduced some caps for the first time in certain categories.

Speaker 2: And we had carried those caps forward to twenty nineteen as well.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And those caps were a way for us to try to make the uh to give out to people the same amount for a similar thing. That is to say, if you have a room that you're attending, you know, that you're going to stay in, and you you're asking for the uh hotel room payment that we cap it at the same amount we're not giving four hundred dollars one person for their hotel save and a hundred dollars to another just because of what they asked. So giving a more consistent cap. Same thing with flights. We put caps on those things as well so that we could uh limit those things down. One of the things that we have found over time to sound like I'm going to go back and

Speaker 1: uh remake on something I just said which is you know see if you can fit more people in with less thing uh less money but we find ourselves sometimes in a problem that if we give away very small opportunity 100 bucks, 50 bucks, 55 bucks, then people won't actually comment. Because uh it is uh even though we Sometimes give them exactly what they asked for, sometimes people. The most uh, I would say, offending category is the people who just want a free ticket. They're like, ah, don't worry, I'll come down there and I'll stay with some friends and I just want a ticket. And they're you know from the area. And then because they don't view the ticket as value.

Speaker 1: For some reason or another. Even though it does overall decrease the budget we allocate, it's money that we have reserved in the budget. That we have to pay ourselves back and forth one way or another or paying for someone's ticket. Um though that's like I seem to remember at least in 2018 has so many unclaimed tickets. That was a large quantity of dollars related to that. I don't know if that's true same thing last year.

Speaker 2: We did not have as many last year. I think we we also did not did not have as many second grants as the 2018, I believe. But it was there was a small amount, I think like three or four maybe single tickets that were left unclaimed.

Speaker 1: Okay.

Speaker 2: Something so pretty small number.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it was a dozen or so the previous year. But yeah, so uh we have to know also the human nature of making small grants is something else that also plays into this of If we give a too small of a grant that we may actually will have a lot of people who uh claim it say, yes, I will take that money, take that money. When we give them the grant, they'll claim the grant, and then just no show.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Um at the conference. And we are left with a bank of funds. um that we could have actually had given somewhere else who won't come.

Speaker 3: Usually when there's unclaimed tickets, those come from uh from grants At

Speaker 2: least well some people can request money just to him to request but you can request money and you can request tickets. So you could request, you know, I just need tickets. I can get my own way there or I live locally and I just want a ticket Or you can request just money, for example, might or say I'm I'm speaking, but I need some extra money to help cover travel costs. Or I can pay part of my way, but I can't pay all my way. I just need some extra money Or we actually had one person last year who um just wanted some extra money to help cover the costs of transporting per service animal over because but uh for the extra accessibility. Which is great. Uh unfortunately circumstances woke out worked out that she couldn't make it and so we ended up not girl so we ended up uh not giving her money this year, but that she was very communicative communicative with us through the entire process and it was great to work with.

Speaker 2: But You know, there are all sorts of unusual and excited circumstances that may come up.

Speaker 3: So these are the different um the like categories that you were talking about, that the that you have and these categories is it something like when you submit a grant do you have to choose which category are you submitting the grant for or is this categorization something that you guys do you want to

Speaker 2: In 2000 or good art.

Speaker 1: I mean uh from I think it goes back to 2017. As far as I remember, there's a two-step question of do you need only a ticket? And if you ask answer yes to that, then we don't ask you any more questions. If you say no to that, then we ask you how much money do you need? and then we request a breakdown of it for us to be able to answer uh uh answer some questions about it. Um if you don't break down we will tend to be um less able to understand what the request is for actually and it makes it a little more difficult to judge so giving that breakdown is important. So those are the ways that

Speaker 1: uh we basically categorize it for us is we ask the people to self-categorize with uh two three steps I guess you'd say uh do you need just to take it or you don't need just

Speaker 2: Yeah, and one thing we'll um try to do this year as well to uh hopefully uh make things a little bit clearer is there was some confusion last year about uh just using the word ticket, whether we're talking about a conference ticket or a plane ticket. And so we're gonna be that you should clarify the wording a little bit to clarify that those are applicable.

Speaker 3: Talking about the the application that somebody's gonna fill out. Um I uh I mean with this information is probably also a good idea for uh as Robert was saying, like for for everybody who's who's filling out the the the uh the application to uh detail exactly what is it that well that's that's one thing that is not a hundred percent clear to me like Should they detail exactly what is it that they need the grant for or should they detail exactly what is it that they're gonna uh like spend some money uh throughout the entire trip regardless if it's for for the I mean from the grant or not and then at the end of it say this is why I need

Speaker 3: like uh I don't know, five hundred dollars, which is going to be about ten percent of my of my actual expenses. So

Speaker 2: I think um The way we have the form set out is that it's pretty much okay give is it is like give us a total amount and then please try to break it down for flights versus hotel versus transportation, other transportation. etc. So yeah so kind of give us a big number and then break it up into pieces as you can best sell. So say your ask is seven hundred bucks. So say that's 400 for flights and two what and say two hundred cover half your hotel and other hundred cover cat fares to and from the airport type of thing.

Speaker 1: Yeah, the exact wording question pulled up. So this is 2019's exact wording may change to 2020. How do you plan to spend the opportunity graph? Please give an estimated cost rate gap. So it's moderately open-ended. That is the only question by which we can turn all of that. things and by the way one of the things that I should should also add here to everything else is that is one question our entire form including the checking the box that you understand you have to submit Submit submit the receipts to us in order for us to follow IRS guidelines since we're in the US and we have to keep them happy. Everything including that and your name and your email address is

Speaker 1: 10 fields.

Speaker 3: Okay.

Speaker 1: So I

Speaker 2: I think we're going to add one more field to it this year, just uh asking what airport you're going to be coming from to make uh to make it easier to to identify the uh travel costs.

Speaker 1: Yeah. So one of the main things again to like re-emphasize we don't ask lots of information unnecessarily because in the past some forms are longer. And we're trying to be very much not bureaucratic, not detailed uh on on every little thing, weigh the cost of it, adding your because the cost of someone going opening up a form and seeing all these fields and then be like, and I'm gonna have to go to another page. They might just bounce. We'd rather people uh uh you know, submit the form to us uh rather than us get all of our uh little f fancy questions answered Well

Speaker 3: now it's still I mean that I think that's a good idea, but also uh you guys are are kinda like uh uh leaving things open so whoever is writing these grants they can add anything else right because there's that question about okay tell us exactly what are you going to spend this money uh on but also they could add like uh the uh uh maybe actu an explanation on their other context right like why m is their specific case uh unique and stuff like that.

Speaker 2: Yeah, we have a separate question about to tell us about your a little bit about yourself and why you'd like to come to Jake a con for that exact exact sort of thing.

Speaker 1: Yeah, that's uh that's the point to cover that. And one of the reasons why we don't give nice fine-grade breakdowns of you know hotel and travel and other fields is because in the case of service animal, we would never think to put that field. Yeah. I am It's just something that had not come up before as a as an ask for someone to have. And rather than us being uh, shall I say, um uh un unfriendly with our limiting of our choices down and preemptively and also moderately prompting with people to tell to go ahead and supply us with things that they maybe are fine with You know, like they're like, oh we are, you know, a person

Speaker 1: doesn't have they don't need anything to travel, but you know, they all take Ubers, they'll just supply uh supply them a field that they'll go ahead and prevently put more information in making it a nice open-ended ask allows for us to do the judgment on the back end ourselves.

Speaker 3: So I think uh there's one more question about about the actual filling out the the grant uh itself is there like well i mean we we went through the different questions that or like the main ones the the main questions of the the uh the four form has and and like how people should or more or less feel out the uh the breakdown of what is it that they're gonna spend it on and and a little bit about why they're gonna come to Django con or they want to. So what about your personal takes on what 's the most important piece of information on those brands or or like uh I mean this can probably come from whenever you see uh

Speaker 3: some of these forms come through and you read them and you go like well we can't even take this one into consideration because it's missing these or that or like well like what's what's the best way to fill out these these uh requests

Speaker 2: For me personally, the thing I like to pay attention to more than anything else is the telling me about yourself and what you can and uh who you are, why you why you like to get a gender comment. If you can't you know tell us why this is not just some other tech conference to go to, why DjangoCon specifically that is a big elevator in my mind that says, hey, I I just want to go to a tech conference is a very different a very different ask than I want to come to Django Con.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I wouldn't agree with what Drew said. That's the most important thing. um because that's the the main thing that we judge the entire um application by if you ask for Yeah, a relatively modest sum, but don't ask a thing, you'll roundly you'll be related. You'll be very lowly rated as a application just if you almost not even answer it just see anyway again no means by which to judge against other people who bother to fill it out

Speaker 3: Well that's good. Uh and and also I think uh this kind of answers another question because I've seen on Twitter there's a lot of people that they are hesitant on uh on on applying for these type of grants. I mean be it DjangoCon or maybe other conferences too because they go like I don't know uh it's not like uh I in bankruptcy on or anything like that should I actually apply for this but I mean this is this this should should always be open to anyone right even if they're somebody that the that's gonna talk on the conference and they've already gotten a free ticket quote unquote vote because they're talking on the conference. I mean it's still okay for them to submit one of these craps, right?

Speaker 1: Yep. I mean I think though only since we do one point time, you know uh we do show the name of the person with with the grant to as a judgment. Just so in case Bill Gates applies to you, don't know That's mostly joking, but if someone's name happens to be colliding with bull game.

Speaker 2: Yeah, and um yeah and your point about speakers is a good one too because I mean Yeah, last year was the first year we were able to offer speaker travel reimbursement separate from the actual opportunity grants process. But even then we still had a few, I want to say about four people give or take that actually received additional opportunity to grant money on top of this to keep your travel reimbursements. So yeah, if you're speaking, go ahead and apply by all means. And if you're um you know if you're or even a couple organizers got a little bit of aid last year as well

Speaker 1: Yeah, that that's true. And uh I think uh so I don't know if this information has been shared before, but I wouldn't pull it back up again just to give the idea what what the ask size is that people tend to ask. for uh uh we had I believe um the most that someone asked for last year dollar wise was $6,000.

Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a fun one.

Speaker 1: Yeah, the lease that someone asked for was $100. Uh but most people uh on average of our set of uh eighty, uh counted of eighty, uh three I should say. Um We had um with that six thousand number dragging everything out, everything out is um 1490. So I'm sure I could go look at the uh for the mode and other things like that too, but that's That gives you an idea of where people sit in their ass.

Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a I think that that gave us a pretty good overview of uh the amount which is also very interesting. So uh so okay let's let's see like we've gone through more or less like how you guys start uh categorizing these these different different uh applications and then and then well I mean there's there's still a lot of things to take into consideration but it's a a good thing that that we we've been able to talk about exactly like the the most important parts of the application for you um and and then like what are the different things that people people should or how should they fill out the entire application. So what about how exactly does it work? Like once okay I've submitted my my application my grant application

Speaker 3: I got it. I got an email back saying like cool you're gonna get this money. Um now how how am I gonna get that money And and and there's there's a an interesting thing that Robert just mentioned a little bit right now, which is about the whole IRS uh topic of it, right? So there's I mean, if there's any international people people usually we don't know a lot about IRS or what that is right so and and and you guys have to take that that into consideration

Speaker 2: Right, right. Um yeah, uh so the ri the reimbursement process is we try to make it as straightforward as possible. Um you just uh scan or take pictures of receipts and email them to um DEFNA. The address I believe is hello at DEFNA. org. DEFNA beating the Django Events Foundation North America. They're the body that runs uh Django uh that runs DjangoCon. And um they handle the actual reimbursement process and they'll ask you to come back and ask you if you have questions about your receipts and things like that They'll validate it against a spreadsheet that has all the maxims that were relevant to the individuals and all that. And then once they've uh then they'll well reimburse you most people if you can, they'll reimburse via PayPal. But if you're in if your international and PayPal doesn't work there, they'll use uh I think it's transfer-wise as a service to transfer the money over that way. And then as far as the IRS reporting goes, I believe they said

Speaker 2: that DAFNA submits that uh information to the IRS as well.

Speaker 1: And I want to say that we correct me on this too if I misremember yet, but uh we have as a primary process actually that they can do it in person at the uh

Speaker 2: we tried not to make the in-person thing as much of an option last year as we did previous years just because Craig Bruce the Deaf and Treasure was not able to be the in-person And so we didn't have an and so we didn't want to try to burden the other definite people there with the extra work up that they're doing on top of everything else.

Speaker 3: Okay, so let's see if I got this uh right so then I submit my my grant and then I uh I don't know let's say 500 bucks right uh and then it's like maybe Maybe 250 for uh for a flight and then another 250 for the hotel and maybe some meals. Uh so then I get a yes from uh from from the the conference organizers you guys and and then from then on my what I have to do is is basically just to to keep the receipts And then after everything is done, I will send that to you. I mean even even if if maybe I spent instead of uh instead of 500, I spent like 600.

Speaker 3: uh you guys are going to reimburse the 500 bucks and then I will end up spending 100.

Speaker 2: Exactly right, yes. Yeah and um If you know things and so if say you're saying budget 250 per hotel and two fifty for flight and cannot be here, spend three hundred on flight and two hundred on hotel. That's fine as long as your total asks you know if your total asks at that 500 bucks that you were initially awarded for. Even if the actual breakdown doesn't match the fluid ass for the grains, we keep the total amount is what matters later as far as the reimbursement goes.

Speaker 1: Yeah, and and I will add, even though we just said that we really want people to apply and uh all that stuff, that if we get into a situation where um they for some reason can't attend. We can know the sooner that we can know, the sooner we can go off and give someone else that uh branch we're gonna roll down the list and give someone else an opportunity.

Speaker 2: Yeah but I can actually use myself as an example there. For the 2018 uh conference I was I was in the middle of changing jobs when I presented in my um talk and my uh opportunity grant because I wasn't sure whether my new company would pay for my way or not. And then I found out that oh yes, I've been it got accepted, so I asked work, hey can you guys remember uh take care of my travel? And uh they didn't get back to me time before the uh the uh my grant was actually awarded. But uh as soon as I found out I Robert said, hey, my company's stayed for my travel, can I decline my award? And then Robert quickly uh went around it and found something else on the list to uh donate to distribute my money to.

Speaker 3: Every year do you guys always spend like all the the the money allocated for the grant?

Speaker 1: Oh, we tried to.

Speaker 2: Yeah, we we budget spending all of it, but we always end up coming a little bit short and then that money gets rolled over into next two budget.

Speaker 3: Okay, okay. So and what about if for instance uh maybe I submitted a grant, uh I it wasn't accepted, but then at the end of it Uh maybe there there were uh a few people, maybe one or two people that they they declined the grant because as as you were saying Drew right like maybe they were uh at the end of the day uh the company was paying for their travel or whatever um is there do you guys do something like okay We have two or three people that they decline the the grant. Is is there there there's like open spaces I mean do do you do you go back to the people that were accepted were just pending or to do you go back to everyone who submitted?

Speaker 3: Uh

Speaker 1: the way that it's been done recently is that's that score that I mentioned going down the list, and we just rolled down to the next set of names. It makes it so that it makes it so that we don't have to do additional rounds of judgment, right? We all together repeat the set all at once and it keeps it fair for everyone. on that we don't like relook at you know some applications separately that popped into our minds.

Speaker 2: Yeah, and we don't have a at this point a sort of a standby list that we could give last-minute awards to. Like for example, with the surface animal example I used from last year. She didn't find out she couldn't make it until like two weeks before the conference, and so we weren't able to um redistribute that grant in time, so that'll be going over into this year's budget.

Speaker 1: Yeah, because if we were to spend the time to be uh to uh um try to grant money to each person in that last two weeks like and do you all want it? And everyone I'm sure scrambles because we don't know if people are attending or not. If they submit this grant, the assumption is that without it, that their attendance would either be jeopardized or plainly not possible.

Speaker 2: Yeah, and especially for overseas visitors you may have to get a visa, which is a month-long months-long process.

Speaker 3: The receipts the the people have to submit Is there anything off limits or is like anything that you get a receipt for is okay?

Speaker 1: I would say anything that you got a receipt for that was in the realm of what you asked.

Speaker 2: Yeah, we're not gonna yeah, we're not gonna reimburse you for going to the San Diego Zoo, for example.

Speaker 3: So so yeah, moving into into like international recipients, uh all grants how is is there like what are the main issues that you guys have have seen uh or or what are like maybe a few things that you would like to say to to any anybody who's international and and wants to apply for a grant.

Speaker 1: I'm preemptively sorry for all the travel grants.

Speaker 2: Yes, same year. Yeah. Last year, for example, we had one person who um couldn't who was not able to make the conference because the USA Department literally gave him his visa for the wrong date since those visa would have expired mid-conference. And so he really could so f so for him to attend would actually be you know staying here uh illegally so to speak. And so he would yeah, so that would kind of kill his ability to make it there. We felt terrible about that. We still we re we went ahead and proactively reimbursed his uh beast application. And uh told him to go ahead and apply this year as well. And um actually some other friends in the J community are offered to help out with that as well, which is quite nice for his case particularly. But uh in general, yeah, the the earlier you can get started on the visa process, the better off you'll be. And um if you uh happen to run into troubles, you know, we have a visa uh process, the

Speaker 2: visa help, a visa letter that you can get from us. Um I've written email that I think it's like Visa at JimmyCon. us, but don't quote me on that. That you can actually just email and ask, hey, can can you help with the Visa process? And they have They at least know who to who to direct you to the State Department towards getting your reset applied, getting it getting it applied for and uh with any luck approved.

Speaker 3: What are the main the main requests that you that you guys have seen? I mean because I would suspect that maybe it's gonna be it's gonna be mainly a about uh about flights because flying into the the US it's a little bit more expensive whenever you come from like another country. Because if you fly, I don't know, let's say uh what, like maybe uh Texas to to San Diego it's like a 200 buck flight I think it's not so expensive but if you fly like probably South America San Diego I think probably gonna be like, I don't know, eight hundred bucks, something like that.

Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. We and that's probably the reasons why that's why we factor in the cost of you know where basically you have an idea based on where you're coming from. So we have a rough idea that okay if you're flying from out of the country it's going to be more expensive or by by and large than if you're flying domestically. I say by and large because I where I live in in uh Huntsville, Alabama, actually it's like the mo one of the most expensive flights in the country. I think mine last year was about It was over five hundred bucks to apply from Sioux San Diego from Alabama, it was ridiculous. Yeah, but um so yeah, it's We uh yeah, we and so what we'll do is we we'll also get check and get a rough idea these are how most supplies are from this country to get here. So we have a you know at least make sure that the ask is in a reasonable route. I mean Differences have been, you know, and uh as always airline flights, airline flight flight prices

Speaker 2: constantly and continuously change. And so what may have been accurate at the time you applied maybe 200 bucks plus or minus your direction by the time we're actually reviewing the correct So we we have to take that into account as well.

Speaker 3: Like there is a bunch of research around each and every one of the of the applications that you guys get. So when I mean it's it's probably better for everyone to just submit their application as soon as possible, right? But um when when does it does this start or when is it too early to do it or too late

Speaker 2: Well I can tell you it's too early right now because we haven't actually finished the form for this year yet. But um the form will go live about the same time the COVID proposal goes live, which if last year's time could get an indication will be around the March or April timeframe And then it closes and I believe late I believe the uh call for proposals closes in it closed last year, I was saying late May, maybe or maybe early June. It'll be about that same timeframe this year. Uh the exact time we haven't even set uh finalized any of those days yet, so those are all ballpark numbers.

Speaker 3: Uh I don't know if if there's anything that we missed that you guys would like to talk about, maybe uh or just like mention something else.

Speaker 2: I guess the last thing I'd like to say is that if you have Any doubts whatsoever about why we should apply, go ahead and apply. I mean please we like we welcome the application and encourage you to apply And if you have questions you can always email uh email us at um grants at geniocompt. us and we can respond to questions you might have.

Speaker 1: Well, I don't have anything to say now because you said all the things I was gonna say. Um how would I say I look forward to having um you apply to watching this?

Speaker 3: No, that's good, that's good. Ah, well, you know what? Uh I I have an idea also. Uh what about future work? Do you guys uh have any or or have I'd like any to-do list for these next few years or things things that you would like to to improve or maybe change or just try something new? Yeah, is there anything like that?

Speaker 2: I personally would like to see more companies contribute to the Opportunity Grants Fund so we can award some more people. Yeah, the more pla you know if say if companies want to I think Not last year, but in 2018, I think one company, I forget who it was, actually specifically contributed part of their spell their sponsorship money to the opportunity grants fund. And that helped to award the grants to more people that way. I'd like to see more companies do that.

Speaker 1: Mine is slightly different. One of the things that theory is a good number of people who are coming to DakoCon are good at is good developers, programmers, software engineers. The main tool by which we use the opportunity grants we fit have this tool that we send through called Grott. And the tool was made by Andrew Godwin. And Andrew already has enough things on his plate. Uh aside uh but the the tool is uh very old at this point. And um would need some TLC, in fact it means some of um I think it needs to be brought up so that it's uh

Speaker 1: long -term support version that we that Jaco actually supports. So if anyone goes out and searches up ROG and once it makes some pull requests against that on GitHub. And it's G-R-O-R-G. And he makes some improvements. I'm sure Andrew will appreciate it since he's trying to redo the async. Stuff well. We do the sync stuff and Django the async stuff in his Arian channels and migrations and enough.