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Maemo Summit 2008/Sponsorship

Nokia offers a limited budget for sponsoring travel and accommodation of Very Interesting People in the Maemo community and related open source upstream projects. If you are doing a remarkable contribution to Maemo or upstream projects around and you are in non-profit mode you are invited to apply for sponsorship.

[edit] Requirements

• First of all make sure you can make it to Berlin on September 17-20, OSiM World + Maemo Summit. Exceptions can be made but full attendance to 18-19 or 19-20 is the minimum required. This means you have passport and legal stuff in place + time availability confirmed.
• Apply fast! We want to approve a first round of sponsorships by July 15. See how much budget is left after people has booked their trips. Go for a second and last round with the remaining budget, setting a hard deadline by the end of July.
• Edit your maemo.org profile providing all the relevant information about you in the Maemo context. This will help us knowing/remembering who are you and what are you doing here.
• When registering, explain in your sponsorship request how can you contribute to the success of the Summit: run a session, get a responsibility in the organization, develop a demo to showcase... up to you. We just want to avoid sponsoring passive participants, no matter how much active they have been in the past. This sponsorship is not a prize for past contributions.
• Once approved you have to make it. Cancelling accepted sponsorship requests is a real hassle, a waste of time and money. You understand this.  :)
• If your request is not approved you understand it's for a reason and you won't argue about it. We might even make potential mistakes, but not even in this case we will respond to an argument. You also understand this. :)

[edit] Bookings, payments, reimbursement...

Steps to be made by those getting a sponsorship request approved.

• Once approved you will get an email asking you to contact asap the travel agent arranged by Nokia, providing them the basic information: Full name (needs to be the same as in your profile), origin & departure dates for outbund and return flights.
  • If your trip can be cheaper than with carrier flight companies (Ryanair and the like as opposed to Lufthansa etc) or if you can travel easier/cheaper by train or bus, then it's better that you book your own tickets and Nokia will reimburse you. The travel agents can't operate with those "cheap" airlines. By taking this shortcut you will help getting more Maemo contributors covered by the sponsorship budget. Thanks!
    • Please note that apparently in this case you must not contact the travel agency mentioned in the Mail from Quim. For me they immediately tried to reserve a flight with an "expensive" airline, resulting in a double booking for me - I hope this will get resolved. (simon)
• We still need to sort out the accommodation. Nokia would be happy making a group reservation but we need a venue for that e.g. a hostel. Recommendations are welcome.
  • If we can't make it for this group preservation then everybody will need to pay their own accommodation first, and then Nokia will reimburse you within 30 days after receiving your tickets. Still, cheap and decent hostels need to be found for a recommendation.
• Keep your travel and accommodation tickets! Otherwise Nokia won't be able to refund your expenses. Food and local transport is not covered by the sponsorship.

[edit] Also: reasons not to get a sponsorship request accepted

These are the reasons why we are not accepting some sponsorship requests. We hope you understand.

• You show good intentions and interesting ideas, but this sponsorship program focuses on Maemo or OSS upstream developers with a clear involvement and on-topic contributions made.
• You are a professional developer earning your income in the Maemo platform or similar projects, and we want to concentrate our budget in developers with a non-profit approach to the Maemo platform or related upstream projects.
• Since you are really far away sponsoring you would cost a nice % of the budget available. We are inviting people from outside Europe but they are rock stars in the Maemo community or related upstream projects.