WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:15.360 Hi everyone, unfortunately the next speaker can't make it, so we've changed the program. 00:15.360 --> 00:22.200 She is, I think, delayed and is not in Brussels yet, instead we thought, because we have 00:22.200 --> 00:26.600 so many funders and people who work around funding that will do a little discussions 00:26.600 --> 00:33.560 slash Q&A about funding in general, we have quite a few organizations here who have organized 00:33.560 --> 00:36.920 this devrim together with doing this for the first time. 00:36.920 --> 00:41.560 Some people have even their logos, but we're going to do a small round of introductions 00:41.560 --> 00:45.720 just so you know, which organizations are there and then we'll just take whatever questions 00:45.720 --> 00:50.600 you have in general about the topic of funding and hope we can answer as many as possible. 00:50.600 --> 00:55.400 I'm starting my name is Marie, I am the co-director of prototype fund, I'm here together 00:55.480 --> 01:04.280 with my colleague, the other Marie from prototype fund, it's just an accident and we are a German 01:04.280 --> 01:09.560 government funder funding open source mostly security and infrastructure innovation projects. 01:11.400 --> 01:15.000 Thank you Marie, I'm Tara, I'm a technologist at the software and tech agency. 01:15.560 --> 01:21.480 We're also a German organization funded by the German Ministry for Economy and Climate Action. 01:22.040 --> 01:26.520 I'm here with my colleague Mirko, who's leading our sovereign tech fund program 01:27.240 --> 01:33.880 and you'll hear more from Mirko in the next session, so I'll also talk more about our 01:33.880 --> 01:36.520 organization and I'll hand it over to Ronny. 01:38.760 --> 01:43.480 I thank you so much, I'm Ronny Lump, I am with a nail that's foundation. 01:44.520 --> 01:50.920 I'm here alone because we have a buff room at one, so there's a bit of overlap. 01:51.960 --> 02:03.000 We are running several NGO projects and also some other funds that are available. 02:05.080 --> 02:10.680 Hello, I'm the other Mirko, I work with the next foundation and as such, we're 02:10.680 --> 02:17.320 participating in the NGO Commons project, that's supposed to measure the impact, so basically 02:17.320 --> 02:23.400 open technology funding on the entire program and others. We do, of course, host many projects, 02:23.400 --> 02:29.560 but maybe for people know, is we do research programs where we assess the state of the open 02:29.560 --> 02:36.280 source ecosystem in Europe on regular reports that are coming out every year and I participated 02:36.280 --> 02:41.400 in that and I also have a research background in the economics of open source. So looking forward 02:41.400 --> 02:42.040 to that discussion. 02:47.320 --> 02:55.320 I'm sitting in the back, so I'm François, part of Probable, so Adrien is always 02:55.320 --> 02:59.720 my colleague over there. We are building a company around Saquitland, which is a famous 02:59.720 --> 03:04.760 Python framework for machine learning, so we're building a mission driven company where 03:04.760 --> 03:10.600 it's picked in the by-law that we need to maintain and ship open source software for 03:10.600 --> 03:16.680 data science and we also setting up business model around it, building support activity, 03:17.160 --> 03:26.120 processes, activity, product, sponsorship program, so very happy to organize this room with you guys 03:26.120 --> 03:33.240 and hear your questions around Probable, yeah, thank you very much. 03:35.240 --> 03:40.200 Yes, so if you have a question for any of the organizations, you want to take over? 03:41.480 --> 03:46.120 Yes, we need to not forget the last organization that has been running that this 03:46.440 --> 03:51.080 room, unfortunately Alex from François to our friend Nation Europe cannot be here right now, 03:51.080 --> 03:56.360 but we should mention that they've also really worked hard to help us put this together before 03:56.360 --> 04:02.120 we take questions. So now we're taking questions. Anything funding will try to answer, of course, 04:02.120 --> 04:06.040 funding happens in different contexts and maybe we're not the right person to answer 04:06.040 --> 04:10.520 this specific questions, but we'll try to answer anything we can. You should know that this 04:10.600 --> 04:17.160 microphone which doesn't make my voice louder is there for the online feed and that means we'll 04:17.160 --> 04:23.320 have to repeat your question for the people online to hear it, so please keep your questions a bit 04:23.320 --> 04:30.040 short so we can not spend too much time repeating questions. First question, yes, a lot of here 04:31.000 --> 04:37.800 have managed to talk to funders and government to convince them to fund you and so you can 04:37.800 --> 04:42.680 submit to the right people. Can you share a bit of behind the scene what goes into this kind of 04:42.680 --> 04:49.240 conversation and if at all other people interested in lobbying to their government can do that too? 04:50.440 --> 04:56.280 Yes, so the question is about how to talk to governments to have such funds and get such support 04:56.280 --> 05:01.880 and what are the dynamics. I think we have very different cases of how it went. I can start with 05:01.880 --> 05:08.280 prototype fund, maybe you can say something about STA, prototype fund was basically random panel 05:08.280 --> 05:13.960 with a ministry and a nerd and he said, hey, be good if you'd fund open source and the person 05:13.960 --> 05:19.880 from the ministry happened to be kind of into it and said, let's talk and then you of course need to 05:19.880 --> 05:26.440 very quickly start being very professional for it to continue and this person got open knowledge 05:26.440 --> 05:32.360 foundation, Germany involved, they had experience with fundraising and writing grant applications 05:32.360 --> 05:37.960 and then very quickly it turned into a very professional thing but I think there is also a bit 05:37.960 --> 05:42.840 of an element of finding the right people in government that will be happy to support you which we had 05:42.840 --> 05:49.720 a lot of luck with. Thank you. Yeah, I would say also like for us it's a lot of also doing 05:50.360 --> 05:54.920 like laying the groundwork and things of like nurses and for us work so I think for for the 05:54.920 --> 05:59.800 sovereign tech agency we had people also like write about the importance like for example 05:59.800 --> 06:05.400 of Felix Prader who wrote an important article about explaining why. I think he wrote a 06:06.200 --> 06:09.960 important article about like why it's important to have something like the sovereign tech agency 06:11.240 --> 06:17.880 also our co-founders Adriana and Fiona wrote a feasibility study that you can also see on our website 06:17.880 --> 06:23.800 that was they the groundwork to what our concept is based on also like their experience and like 06:24.440 --> 06:28.920 our the team's experience in building like some similar structures and similar 06:28.920 --> 06:33.720 working similar fields so I think that's the important thing is like having like a 06:35.080 --> 06:39.400 understanding like what the problem is talking to the right people maintainers coming to places 06:39.400 --> 06:45.640 like here and understand what the problems are and then connecting it with solutions that are 06:45.640 --> 06:52.920 based in evidence and presenting that case to the policy makers. Do you want to 06:53.000 --> 07:00.360 you perspective so within a known that most of our funds come from the European Commission 07:01.560 --> 07:10.120 and well let's start it off like in 2018 or something we did a Gardner research Gardner yes 07:10.120 --> 07:17.160 sorry with the European Commission to identify what what was missing in Europe and 07:18.040 --> 07:26.680 there was really a need for open source software so that's when we started off with some funds 07:29.080 --> 07:39.800 to to to grants open source projects and well yeah new funds have come after that 07:40.440 --> 07:48.440 because again European Commission still says that open source is is needed is very important 07:50.520 --> 07:55.800 but however maybe at the end of this year it will not be called 07:56.440 --> 08:01.640 and Gianni anymore next generation internet but the the funds will still be there 08:02.600 --> 08:09.000 but with another name although well I'll show you first 08:09.960 --> 08:18.120 can you say anything about how you work with or if you work with research funders also are 08:18.120 --> 08:23.480 the main focus source and if there's kind of if you should if you shouldn't if this 08:23.480 --> 08:32.760 pros are not as an issue for me yeah okay I will repeat the question and maybe you can repeat the 08:32.760 --> 08:38.040 question the question was how we can work with research funders and we'll be basically 08:38.680 --> 08:43.160 overlapping funding programs for open source technology and for research so the projects that I 08:43.160 --> 08:51.880 have been working in were all combined research funding and open source funds actually more 08:51.880 --> 08:57.000 research funding and I think it is important to understand that these programs have different 08:57.000 --> 09:02.200 purposes and that research funding programs don't primarily aim at and outcomes that are 09:02.280 --> 09:08.680 open technologies and that sometimes poses a problem especially towards when these projects end 09:09.800 --> 09:14.120 there is huge enthusiasm for the participants because they want to get their papers published 09:14.120 --> 09:21.000 and their work rate until that project ends and then there's a cliff and everybody disappears 09:21.000 --> 09:25.640 to the next project and the outcomes of the project are in the air and if you're lucky they 09:25.640 --> 09:30.280 develop a lot of their own but most of the time unfortunately they will not be continued to 09:30.920 --> 09:35.400 continue to be developed and I think that's the major challenge that we should keep in mind when we 09:35.400 --> 09:40.760 work with research programs that are time limit and specifically focused on a topic is that during 09:40.760 --> 09:46.280 the program we already need to plan the transition project usually called like dissemination or 09:46.280 --> 09:51.160 something where normally we say let's talk about this if people read about this but today I think 09:51.160 --> 09:55.880 especially in combination with open technology development when you talk about how do we transition 09:55.880 --> 10:01.240 this into a viable community that can continue when the research funding program ends we are 10:01.240 --> 10:05.960 at the links donation thinking of this in as we said our projects and participate in grants 10:05.960 --> 10:11.480 grant funded projects but it's been a way a new approach like we we haven't developed like the 10:11.480 --> 10:20.520 best practices for this across the board anybody else I can represent the edge case we are 10:20.520 --> 10:25.960 at the tech funder and the research program in one so we're funding by the federal ministry 10:25.960 --> 10:32.680 for education in research and Germany and officially we're not a funder where research and what 10:32.680 --> 10:37.320 we're supposed to do as open knowledge foundation is to research how to fund open source and we 10:37.320 --> 10:44.360 happen also to fund open source while doing that it's a bit of a funny situation to be in because 10:44.360 --> 10:50.360 you write a lot of research report but people think your funder only very frustrating for the research 10:50.360 --> 10:56.360 people in the team I think and we also have that issue with sustainability because it doesn't matter 10:56.360 --> 11:02.120 that much to the people when it was the fund was set up it didn't really matter that much if the 11:02.120 --> 11:07.320 projects would be sustainable and only within years of doing research about how to fund correctly 11:07.320 --> 11:12.600 we were able to make the topic emerge and now like in the next stage of doing that it's an interesting 11:12.600 --> 11:19.880 combination it wasn't probably perfect at the start but I see benefits of doing both at the same time 11:20.520 --> 11:28.360 I'll tell you also like for us research is very important it's when for example we've 11:28.360 --> 11:33.720 been to our resilience program it was based on looking at sort of the research I was out there 11:33.720 --> 11:38.040 on bugbondy programs which and then we found out for example there was a gap in the research 11:38.040 --> 11:43.720 on bugbondy programs in open source so we then commissioned a research to look into these questions 11:44.200 --> 11:48.920 because for us like we have some assumptions based on conversations with maintainers 11:48.920 --> 11:55.560 but we wanted to also have some those assumptions also tested in scientific ways so that 11:55.560 --> 11:59.720 and we found out that yeah we did learn a lot from that new research and it's also confirmed 11:59.720 --> 12:04.760 on the things that we had assumed so when you were on the right track and I think that's also like 12:04.760 --> 12:10.200 part of I think our way of doing like public research technologies to reiterate based on 12:10.280 --> 12:15.800 science and evidence and then actually doing and then comparing the results and then coming up with 12:15.800 --> 12:21.320 a new iteration for our programs so yeah so that's nothing it's important what research 12:28.520 --> 12:33.640 yeah so I maybe I'll just introduce myself for this one show up here so I'm Alex from the FSE 12:33.640 --> 12:38.200 and yeah they asked me to join us now which I'm now on here and I'm happy to take your questions 12:56.840 --> 13:03.560 I like this question a lot the question is whether we have any advice on what 13:03.560 --> 13:11.000 to do right in applications and what we should not be doing I think people should start by answering 13:11.000 --> 13:21.320 the questions we ask because we ask very specific things because we have point systems internally 13:21.320 --> 13:26.200 based on like is the person's competent and we ask what's your background we don't ask you to tell us 13:26.200 --> 13:30.920 not the story in that field because then we cannot ask answer that question for that 13:31.000 --> 13:35.960 project of application and there's reasons why we want to know specific things and 13:36.840 --> 13:42.280 ask them for real like we ask for example milestones and the amount of applications we get with 13:42.280 --> 13:49.960 one backend to front ends is way too high it's like we need to be able to understand your project 13:49.960 --> 13:55.480 the second thing is don't try to bullshit us it's like all these like big long sentences about 13:55.560 --> 14:01.080 the state of the world and whatever they don't have they just take space away try to come to 14:01.080 --> 14:05.400 the point and ask the question with like W's like what are you doing why are you doing it 14:06.680 --> 14:11.720 who are you doing it with when are you going to do it these things like be concrete is I think 14:11.720 --> 14:17.720 the most important thing and also read the manual like don't come with like I want to 14:17.720 --> 14:23.000 do a lot of maintenance if you're applying to an innovation fund for example like make sure you're 14:23.080 --> 14:27.560 actually write an application that fits that one fund because otherwise you have no chances 14:27.560 --> 14:31.160 and you're wasting your own time 14:39.960 --> 14:47.960 yeah this I mean I can only repeat what you say but one thing to add to that is don't be 14:48.040 --> 14:59.320 just another project because we have so many yeah but we do this better be original because 14:59.320 --> 15:10.440 if you can do better then join the other projects yeah I think that's it yeah I want to 15:10.440 --> 15:15.080 emphasize the fact that yeah reading the question is important because we might not notice 15:15.080 --> 15:19.240 what it takes us sometimes weeks or months to write these questions everything is there for 15:19.240 --> 15:26.680 reason we try to also elaborate for example through some explained text also in our like 15:26.680 --> 15:31.640 criteria for applying what we support and what we can support what we can support just to also 15:31.640 --> 15:38.760 like because we don't want you to go through the process if if there's not a good fit but yeah 15:38.760 --> 15:49.080 ultimately like so the important part about looking and explaining things and not assuming 15:49.080 --> 15:54.600 that we know things like I've been in the three for a long time I know a lot of our open source 15:54.600 --> 16:00.120 but if don't assume that in your application that everyone reading the application will 16:00.120 --> 16:05.480 wouldn't know it because for us it's also a being a public funder it's about also 16:05.480 --> 16:08.920 making the case for the software like I could write the application for you I can fill in all the 16:08.920 --> 16:15.640 plans that the left plot it's often better for that to come from you because you're the 16:15.640 --> 16:20.600 people that know your work does then can make the best arguments for your work so don't assume 16:20.600 --> 16:28.680 knowledge just write everything with as the questions required I maybe have one thing to add 16:29.240 --> 16:33.160 because it's a bit the country of what you say also don't assume we don't know anything the 16:33.880 --> 16:39.320 amount of applications we get where people describe something that exists that we use every day 16:39.320 --> 16:46.920 and then say it doesn't exist is extremely high and we know a bit what's existing and what 16:46.920 --> 16:50.760 not and then tell why it's different or better instead of saying it doesn't exist there are 16:50.760 --> 16:57.720 no solutions to make lists yeah there are a lot I think like and we read a lot of applications 16:57.720 --> 17:04.440 try to stick out I we've read 257 application in the last months at prototype funds so 17:04.440 --> 17:09.080 you need to make sure it's actually really getting to the point to stick out I think we had a 17:09.080 --> 17:14.680 very press pressing question there is the best practice or is that good idea to share the 17:14.680 --> 17:20.600 winning proposals so other people can have an idea is do something like this these are the 17:20.600 --> 17:25.400 winning proposals not just a project itself but this is the actual proposal that we're seeing 17:26.040 --> 17:31.480 so maybe people can get an idea the same what is not the then shift way of explaining things 17:31.480 --> 17:41.080 so we don't because there is also a personal like I'm sorry so if we share winning proposals 17:41.080 --> 17:46.280 with people so they can learn from it we don't because there is a lot of private information in 17:46.280 --> 17:51.480 there there's people who explain why they're like personally related to some project however 17:51.560 --> 17:58.920 we do share selected parts of applications in a blog post like this is three good examples 17:58.920 --> 18:03.560 for the milestones this is three good example for this so that's so we do like selected sharing 18:06.520 --> 18:11.880 for the same reasons but luckily some of our project also developed applications in the 18:11.880 --> 18:18.200 open so those are available for folks who might want to read them but I think that might be 18:18.360 --> 18:25.880 useful because like everything is contextual and for us like your ability of like for us we just need 18:25.880 --> 18:31.960 the information like your ability to run an application like your level of process not the goal here 18:31.960 --> 18:36.440 like that's not what we're evaluating so I think there's I would say there's also like lots of room 18:36.440 --> 18:43.960 in applications for people it's more about for us the information and the work as long as that's 18:44.040 --> 18:49.480 presented in a in a neat way that helps us get what we want out of it then that's all we need so 18:54.600 --> 19:02.520 yeah part of our process is that we also do some in-depth follow-up processes so we we do things 19:02.520 --> 19:10.760 in in three rounds and in the second rounds we do some follow-up questions and 19:11.160 --> 19:21.240 they are also like like you said of some of of personal nature so we cannot share it but what 19:21.240 --> 19:32.360 we do share is which projects did dipwing and and what did they describe but not in a detail as in 19:32.360 --> 19:49.560 a proposal but yes the projects which is there yes that you say that there is something like open 19:49.960 --> 19:55.320 there's a platform called open grant for people to make their proposal by themselves and 19:56.200 --> 20:02.520 it's not always active but it's for the video sorry just talking about open grants is a platform where 20:02.520 --> 20:07.640 you can submit your proposals if of course funders can submit it on your behalf but you can as 20:07.640 --> 20:16.120 of individual to that yeah I do have a question the the question is so I don't know how much you can 20:16.120 --> 20:20.680 answer but a lot of philanthropic organization and of funding the same projects and because they 20:20.680 --> 20:24.360 trust these people and they think that these people will do a good job and then it creates a 20:24.360 --> 20:29.400 co-chemper and a lot of people who are outside that circle and never actually access that and we're 20:29.400 --> 20:33.640 working on a proposal project where we are trying to work with funders to improve their 20:33.640 --> 20:39.480 rubrics for evaluation do you think that you also have space for people to contribute to your 20:39.480 --> 20:50.520 review system and make sure that it is actually equitable so the question is about funders that 20:50.520 --> 20:58.280 keep funding the same projects over and over again and whether there is ways to maybe work on 20:58.280 --> 21:07.640 processes that make it more equitable right so I think there's different types of funders 21:07.640 --> 21:12.920 there are funders that are like gonna fund the established projects for example STA like with 21:12.920 --> 21:18.520 the STF they do maintenance so the projects are there they're strong that's logical I think 21:18.520 --> 21:23.080 funders like ask prototype fund we do fund a lot of people who have never been funded before 21:23.880 --> 21:29.080 we're trying to make our process better we're always open to talking about it however our 21:29.080 --> 21:34.440 processes are also set in stone for several years every time we get new funding for the ministry 21:34.440 --> 21:40.680 so we don't have all the freedom to change our application process but there's still an 21:40.680 --> 21:45.800 interesting learning because we are the type of funder that would actually fund a lot of people who 21:45.800 --> 21:58.200 are not part of these echo chambers and with us yeah you can reapply no problem so if you 21:58.200 --> 22:11.560 have been denied you can ask us why and how and you can learn from it and you can improve on 22:11.560 --> 22:21.560 your next submission you have something to say about it yeah can also like for us like 22:21.560 --> 22:25.960 because we're also not coming added from like a philanthropian logic like for us it's 22:26.840 --> 22:30.920 we have important digital infrastructure that needs to be maintained that's work 22:30.920 --> 22:39.480 that's work that deserves to be compensated so we look for exactly the types of projects that 22:39.480 --> 22:44.440 need maintenance and fund people who are maintaining them and then we paid them to maintain it and 22:45.960 --> 22:50.200 in that sense we also have two ways of getting applications and so we do have an open application 22:50.680 --> 22:56.200 where and we also have our scouting process where we go actively and sort of identify 22:56.200 --> 23:02.440 strategic areas or part of infrastructure that are undermined and try to find the best way of 23:02.440 --> 23:10.360 getting resources into maintaining that infrastructure so I think it takes like this two way approach 23:10.360 --> 23:16.760 of like pulling people in and then pushing out like support into the field so yeah 23:16.840 --> 23:20.040 no more questions 23:41.000 --> 23:45.800 Mirko do you want to take this? Mirko is our lead on the fellowship so that's why 23:46.760 --> 23:53.720 yeah those the question was around our fellowship program we did last year or like the 23:53.720 --> 23:59.880 started and the question was the survey that we did in order to inform our decisions on this one 23:59.880 --> 24:08.600 so we reached out to our community and 530 people responded there and it was kind of a qualitative 24:08.600 --> 24:14.040 quantitative approach maybe you ask like questions around you know drop downsides on but also 24:14.120 --> 24:20.680 lots of free texts and that be reviewed and there was lots of very interesting parts in that 24:20.680 --> 24:27.480 so I had like some suggestions or like some some assumptions around the program and sometimes 24:27.480 --> 24:33.880 we just want to use those surveys to you know reconfirmed them or being proven wrong but one thing for 24:33.880 --> 24:39.240 instance was that we feel that the open source maintainer ecosystem is very diverse and that there 24:39.320 --> 24:46.840 is no one silver bullet and one thing was okay what if we could you know give people the possibility 24:46.840 --> 24:52.440 to not only be funded for 40 hours a week but maybe also only for six or eight because then they could 24:52.440 --> 24:59.160 use their Friday off to maintain the projects that they would only support on the weekend and in 24:59.160 --> 25:03.480 the evening when the kids are around and all that stuff and actually that proved true so there were 25:04.200 --> 25:10.520 I think one third that yeah you know what below 12 hours a week or like even only six hours 25:10.520 --> 25:19.080 would be nice for me as well so that was one learning. We have time for one very short question 25:20.440 --> 25:22.440 okay 25:33.480 --> 25:39.880 twice that you would give me and especially on on the timing of like going to contact such fun because 25:39.880 --> 25:46.040 like I'm working on a project videos in very early stages and open source project of work and connected 25:46.040 --> 25:53.240 to this are there any kind of like aggregators of information about all of your funds as they 25:53.400 --> 26:01.880 are at place besides searching on Google for funding and open source is there anything I can 26:01.880 --> 26:07.240 any site I can go to such a permission and start for hacking and asking two questions for 26:09.240 --> 26:15.480 as are the two questions are when does one start talking to funders when starting a new project 26:15.480 --> 26:19.880 and where does one find resources about funding and funding lists 26:20.280 --> 26:29.240 I think the funding the where does one start depends a lot on the funder mostly funders have time 26:29.240 --> 26:34.600 lines on their websites and you'll have to do research because there's not one answer in my opinion 26:35.240 --> 26:41.400 and there is a lot of cool funding lists that are like long URLs I don't know by heart 26:41.400 --> 26:48.280 that we at prototype fund have all on our knowledge base so like you could find that but 26:49.240 --> 26:53.800 generally it's like a bunch of lists on GitHub I think with good funders 26:57.000 --> 27:01.160 yeah I mean depends on the problem like for us like if you're just starting out probably not 27:02.360 --> 27:07.000 good we're not probably not a good fund for you because we fund the existing infrastructure 27:07.000 --> 27:12.520 project you might be just starting working on a new infrastructure project that might be interesting 27:13.320 --> 27:21.080 for us but or but please stop your maintenance should be something that's been there for a while at least 27:25.320 --> 27:30.600 just one bunch of addition there's also beside the open source funds that exist there's also 27:30.600 --> 27:37.560 what's called digital Europe that is a European fund where when you do something where you have 27:37.800 --> 27:41.640 you know some international cooperation you can also go for funds and there's like a lot of 27:41.640 --> 27:48.120 money that in in these type of things and they are special funds that at least from my understanding 27:48.120 --> 27:54.120 that are going to be there for everything that is tax-orienting and it all like you know that 27:54.120 --> 28:02.040 is in something that has more use than other sorts like in in in in in difference to for example 28:02.040 --> 28:07.960 NGI because NGI is horizon so it's like a research fund the digital Europe is a fund that is 28:07.960 --> 28:14.840 about you know more sustainable stuff for yeah but this is also what they can look and if you find 28:14.840 --> 28:18.680 cooperators it's actually not so bad thank you 28:19.640 --> 28:35.640 I'm here there's a lot of input on this question however we are out of time maybe people 28:35.640 --> 28:40.360 meet each other and give each other tips about where to find funding thanks everyone 28:40.360 --> 28:47.160 we're continuing in 10 minutes with the next session and already forgot the title again 28:47.160 --> 28:53.160 combining funding fast together combining public and private efforts