TPF GC

TPF Grant Committeeambs - TPF GC Chair

TPF Grants Committee?

TPF supports Perl-related projects development;

TPF GC is responsible for:

publishing calls for grant proposals;

evaluating and ranking grant proposals;

assigning grant managers to funded grants;

performing regular reports on running grants;

Who is TPF GC?

TPF GC is composed by:

me, Curtis “Ovid” Poe, Leon Brocard, Rafael Garcia-Suarez, Thomas Klausner, Ben Tilly, Will “Coke” Coleda and Perrin Harkins;

TPF GC is helped by Grant managers:

Adrian Howard, Dave Rolsky, Rosellyne Thompson, Jeff Horwitz and Ricardo Signes;

Who is TPF GC?CU

RTIS

(OVI

D) P

OE

• Previous GC Chair

Who is TPF GC?LE

ON B

ROCA

RD (A

CME)

• YAPC::EU orange founder

Who is TPF GC?RA

FAEL

GAR

CIA-

SUAR

EZ

• Perl 5.10 Pumpkin

Who is TPF GC?TH

OMAS

KLA

USNE

R

• CPANTS Guy

Who is TPF GC?BE

N TI

LLY

• tilly on perlmonks!

Who is TPF GC?W

ILL

(COK

E) C

OLED

A

• Parrot hacker

Who is TPF GC?PE

RRIN

HAR

KINS

• mod_perl guy

Who is TPF GC?AL

BERT

O SI

MÕE

S (A

MBS

)

• Current GC Chair

And Grant Managers

JEFF

HOR

WIT

Z

ADRI

AN H

OWAR

D

DAVE

ROL

SKY

ROSE

LLYN

E TH

OMPS

ON

RICA

RDO

SIGN

ES

Why Them?We need someone!

Somebody will always ask!

Voted originally by TPF board.

Members addition is now voted by itself.

Yes, this might be bad!

Yes, this is good as well!

Pick your choice

How does it work?

A call for grant proposals each three months;

Proposals are received under RT during a month;

Proposals are posted for community discussion;

Proposals are voted by GC community;

Results are published;

Grant managers assigned to accepted proposals;

FAQ:

Who can make proposals?

anyone;

What kind of proposals?

any project relevant to the community;

How to create a proposal?

follow the guidelines in the webpage;

Proposal contents (1/3)

Basics:

Your name and email;

A title for your project;

A small but incisive abstract;

Your biography;

Proposal contents (2/3)

Project relevancy:

Benefits to the Perl Community;

Deliverables;

Proposal contents (3/3)

Proposal details:

Project details;

Project schedule;

Amount requested;

What kind of proposals?

From small to big tasks;

From simple to complex tasks;

Don’t propose a complex task if newbie;

Not necessary new projects:

why not to correct bugs?

why not to add features to existing code?

How do you evaluate?Check if the proposal is relevant to community; (now easier with community feedback)

Compare project with existing alternatives;

Evaluate proposal schedule and feasibility;

Compare relevance with other proposals;

Check if the user is able to complete the task;

Evaluate the amount requested...

Success stories

Improve Perl 5 (Nicholas Clark)

Perl 5 maintenance and development is proceeding steadily, but there are a number of stubborn bugs that no volunteer has had the time to work on. This project will ensure that these bugs are resolved, as well as providing resource to develop new features for both 5.8.x and 5.10.

$11.000 (most expensive grant ever)

Success storiesNicholas Clark:

[Why would not submit another grant to TPF...] what was a hobby became work, without any of the benefits that work usually has.

Success constrains: submitter actually has to want to do it, and the issue of money has to be the actual blocker. Grants don't create time, do increase pressure, and for most people the amount of money the grant offers isn't going to be significant compared with what they could earn commercially.

Success stories

Policies for Perl::Critic (Chris Dolan)

Implement a selection of (20) new policies for Perl::Critic.

$2.000

Success storiesChris Dolan:

Motivation: [...] I knew that I wasn't going to get it done without external motivation. I work best under pressure, [...] The money made it easier to justify the hours spent [...], but was a smaller part of the equation than the publicity.

Success constrains: (a) a respected project that is already underway (b) realistic, quantifiable end goals (c) an experienced grantee (d) concrete intermediate goals

Success storiesPromote pVoice and the use of Perl for writing Assistive Software (Jouke Visser)

Perl may not be the language people would think of first to create something like pVoice. [...] I want to show everyone that Perl is perfectly suitable for this job. Besides this objective, I also want to convince medical professionals that there's an alternative for expensive proprietary software to assist physically challenged people [...]

$3.500

Success stories

Re-factoring Editor Grant (Adam Kennedy)

Synopsis not relevant: the original objective was not completed! But another (probably better) objective was achieved: Strawberry Perl!

Original requested value was paid: $5.000;

Not successful stories

Media-Wiki Syntax Parser

project accepted, but grantee did not start working right after it being accepted;

grantee got a $job;

grantee lost interest on the subject

Make Money vs Do Interesting Things

Not successful stories

Running Too-Long Grants

Interesting tasks, but lack of organization;

Task might be useful, but not in the mood;

Try to follow the schedule!

Running twice the schedule is OK!

Running more than that, is procrastination!

Thank You!