Request for GNOME.Asia Summit to follow the regular travel sponsorship process

[Emily Chen <emilychen522 gmail com>]

Hello board, 

The third annual GNOME.Asia Summit is planning to be hosted in Taiwan for 2010.  The GNOME.Asia organizing team is currently planning for the event.

If possible, we would like for the GNOME.Asia Summit to follow the GNOME Foundation travel process for the 2010 event.  For example, we would like people receiving travel subsidy for GNOME.Asia 2010 to follow the general GNOME travel subsidy policy.

In the past two years the GNOME.Asia organizing committee tried to sponsor speakers with profits from the summit held in 2008. For the 2009 Summit, we provided $5,000 to cover speaker's travel costs.  We only sponsored each speaker up to $400 for people traveling from Asia and up to $800 for people traveling from Europe or the U.S. We also only paid for transportation and not for lodging expenses.

Will it be acceptable for the GNOME.Asia Summit to use the regular travel sponsorship process for the 2010 event and also the next events? We would like to request that the GNOME Foundation consider to help with GNOME.Asia travel costs. The money we request for the travel sponsorship is the same mount as last year, US $5000. The final cost should be based on the actual request from travel application, may be more or less than the amount. 

We need to foundation's help to bring people to GNOME.Asia Summit. Because speakers/participants are the most important thing to a conference. 

Thanks, 
Emily