[Ambassadors] Upcoming events and reimbursement guidelines

[Max Spevack]

On Mon, 24 Nov 2008, Diaa Radwan wrote:

>> (a) No matter where you are in the world, we need scans of receipts 
>> for the expenses that you have at the event.  If we promise you a 
>> budget of $500 and you spend $500, but only have receipts for $400, 
>> then I end up in an awkward position where I either have to say NO to 
>> the last $100, or to reimburse it out of my own pocket.  Please don't 
>> put me in that position.
>
> Well, in Egypt and most African countries 500$ is more than enough to 
> host an event, specially here in Egypt as we seek for a place to host 
> us for free( I am speaking based on my experience with the Egyptian 
> GNU/Liunx activities), so the expense wouldn't reach 500$ anyway 
> unless there is rent for a place, we may pay shipping tariff for the 
> CDs and tshirst; it wouldn't also reach 500$. so reimbursement for 
> 500$ or more is really generous, but it would be hard to claim. Having 
> the smallest reimbursable amount as 500$ would make it hard for 
> contributors/ambassadors. As 500$ is the average salary for junior 
> sysadmin in Egypt.

$500 was just a "random example" that I pulled out of my head.  You can 
replace that number with anything.  The point is that we need receipts 
that match the costs, whatever those costs are.

> Is it possible to collect more than receipt and reimburse them once to 
> more than ambassador(s) or for one ambassador for many events(,might 
> be in different quarters)? so that anyone have paid something can 
> claim it; without having problems.

I'm not sure what you mean, but my goal is to make things as easy on the 
local ambassadors as possible.

>> (d) In any countries using Euros, we try to do all our reimbursements 
>> either through PayPal or to route them through Fedora EMEA e.V. 
>> Thanks for your attention and for all your hard work.  If there are 
>> any questions, please post them to this thread.
>
> What about middle east countries? most of them use US dollars as the 
> second currency and have no PayPal access, can we use the local 
> currency/US dollars, and convert the values to Euors ? or you mean 
> that reimbursement is allowed/possible for countries that uses Euros 
> as their local currency?

Now that Red Hat has an office in Dubai, we might have a much easier 
time dealing with Middle East currencies directly.  This is something I 
will have to look into.

In any event, we can simply figure out the USD equivalent of whatever 
the local currency is, so it isn't a big problem.

--Max