[TOS] POSSE steady-state cycle strawman

[Mel Chua]

As promised, a steady-state calendar strawman for critique. Steve Jacobs 
and I drew this up this morning based on years of past conversations 
with TOS folks at conferences, on this mailing list, on IRC, etc... 
we're going for continuous improvement every time. ;)

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A complete POSSE cycle (funding, organization, workshop-running) is 27 
months, with the last 12 months of those 27 being a June-to-June period 
where the workshops for that cycle actually run. Note that this means 
that POSSE cycles overlap; there will be 2-3 POSSE cycles in the 
pipeline at any given point in time.

Here's the calendar for the first full POSSE cycle, which begins now 
(March 2012) and is for workshops between June 1, 2013 - June 1, 2014.

* March 1, 2012: Red Hat approves $ for POSSEs in the June 2013 - June 
2014 workshop cycle.
* Summer 2012: Financial transfers from Red Hat to the POSSE bank 
account (currently RIT) take place for funding for the June 2013 - June 
2014 workshop cycle.
* October 1, 2012: CFP (Call for Proposals for sites) and CFI (Call for 
Instructors) for June 2013 - June 2014 workshop cycle open (advertise at 
FIE).
* January 1, 2013: CFP and CFI for June 2013 - June 2014 workshop cycle 
close.
* January 2013: A POSSE selection panel (made of people from TOS) makes 
decisions and ends up with a complete list of funded POSSEs with 
instructors, based on instructor availability and site compatibility, as 
well as an "approved instructors" list update.
* February 1, 2013: Final list of POSSE sites and instructors for June 
2013 - June 2014 workshop cycle announced (recruit attendees at SIGCSE).
* ''In the meantime... March 1, 2013: Red Hat approves $ for POSSEs in 
the June 2014 - June 2015 workshop cycle (begin again from top of page).''
* June 1, 2013: POSSE workshops for the June 2013 - June 2014 workshop 
cycle start running.
* June 1, 2014: POSSE workshops for the June 2013 - June 2014 workshop 
cycle stop running. Cycle is complete.

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You might notice a few things in the cycle above.

First, you'll notice RIT's referred to as "the POSSE bank account." A 
few months ago, I started a thread on this mailing list saying "I'm 
going to grad school, who's taking care of POSSE?" and Steve Jacobs 
offered RIT as holder of the POSSE pursestrings the first few rounds. I 
think this is a great idea and a very generous offer; they're already 
doing other projects with Red Hat and are thus in the supplier system, 
which makes moving money way faster (which we need). So they'll do that 
*and* take care of the underlying admin work (getting registration 
infrastructure running, doing marketing, ensuring instructors get paid, 
etc) which means I can do things like... oh, I dunno, homework. :) If we 
need to adjust this down the line, we will (some other TOS institution 
steps in, we decide to make POSSE its own nonprofit org, etc) but right 
now, *thank you* to Steve for getting this going -- his persistent 
efforts are the reason we're going to have Red Hat funding at all.

Second, you may have noticed references to a "POSSE selection panel" for 
a given year of workshops, which is a matchmaking group that takes in 
site applications and a roster of available instructors and draws up the 
final teaching schedule for those 12 months. We'll pick that matchmaking 
group for the June 2013 - June 2014 workshop cycle soon; we'll talk 
about it here, it's going to be all people from TOS, we'll figure out 
who (and how to pick the "who") later. We'll make sure the application 
and selection process continues to be transparent -- bids and 
applications will still be available for viewing, though the mechanism 
isn't set yet (we're rapidly outgrowing wiki pages, so a database-backed 
solution with a publicly accessible web API seems like a good idea Real 
Soon Now). So regardless of whether you're on the "matchmaking group" or 
not, you'll be able to chime in and give feedback advising the 
matchmaking group in making the final decision.

Okay. Comments? Thoughts? It's a strawman, please counterpropose with 
better ideas. :)

--Mel