# CentOS Promo Events

This is a draft proposal to give the CentOS Promo SIG decision-making power over a portion of the CentOS budget for events. To ensure some authority and accountability, the Promo SIG would appoint from among its members a Promo Event Committee (PEC).

## Budget

At the beginning of each calendar year, the PEC would set a budget for the year. This can be done by listing interesting events and estimating expenses, but funding requests would not have to be tied to the specific events used for budgeting. Some padding should be added to accommodate additional events. The PEC should engage the entire Promo SIG, as well as the wider community, when creating a budget.

The PEC budget would come out of the Red Hat budget for the CentOS Community Architect, part of the Open Source Program Office. The Community Architect would not use the PEC budget for their own travel expenses, and they may have expenses outside the PEC.

## Expenses

Expenses would be in three categories:

* Sponsorship -- Sponsoring events for publicity or a booth
* Swag -- Creating new swag or shipping swag to events
* Travel -- Paying travel and lodging (not meals or other expenses) to send people to events

All requests for CentOS budget should go thru the PEC, including travel funding for Red Hat associates (but excluding the Community Architect's own travel).

## Process

The PEC would create a GitLab project and track requests as issues (propose gitlab.com/CentOS/promo/events). Each funding request would be filed as an issue, and we would have templates to ensure we get all the information we need. The PEC would then decide on the issue with two upvotes (or by a different process the PEC decides on), and the Community Architect would handle the logistics. The Community Architect retains the right to veto if Red Hat is unable to provide funding, and the Community Architect may also fast track a yes.

This process is intended to be public, but if anybody needs some level of privacy, they may file the issue as private and explain their reasoning.

Requests to fund the travel of employees of governments and state-owned agencies must be approved by Red Hat Legal, which the Community Architect would coordinate. Approvals for these cases are likely to be extremely rare.

We would use a file in this repository to track budget against approved and actual expenses.

After the event, the requestor or a sponsored person would be required to write an event report. (This requirement might be waived for small swag shipments.) We would provide a template for event reports.