[Typo3-t3board] 24h - 80

[Kasper Skårhøj]

Hi Daniel,

> I understand and respect your wish for fairness and probably also a spot on
> the snowboard tour. I just have to ask you for looking at the facts before
> making implications about the impossibility to register.

I do that below.

> I still wonder how people like Julle or Patrick Broens (or from GB,
> Belgium, France, Austria...) get their payment done on time, if it was not
> possible for people outside of Germany or Switzerland?

Obviously not impossible, but there is good evidence that people from outside 
Germany had to be even FASTER than germans and that means for the last 20 
people on the list Germans were favoured. See numbers later. 

I also remember sitting next to Julle at the office when he looked nervously 
at the list of people that had paid, knowing that he already did as well, but 
with more delay! Assuming that we will have increased popularity next year as 
usual so that even payments have to be done within 24 hours, Julle wouldn't 
be able to come.

> Another thing: of those people whose payment was received but came in too
> late on Friday, only one person was from abroad everybody else was from
> Germany! Of those people having registered but not making it, more 70% were
> German!

Lets take a look at the first 81 people that signed up and assume that a quick 
sign up is a token of serious interest. Among the 81 first people, 12 didn't 
make the payment in time:

Germany: 3
Switzerland: 2
Austria: 3
Denmark: 1
Belgium: 1
France: 2

The german percentage that didn't make it between the initial 81 registrants 
is 25%.

Then it is interesting to look at registrants 82-101 and see who in this group 
made the payment in time (before the 12 above):

Germany: 6
Switzerland: 3
Austria: 1
Denmark: 2

Here german and swizz people - having access to domestic transfers - 
represents 75%

The point is that if a german guy has say 5 days to make the transfer in order 
to make it in time, a Danish guy has maybe 2 because of the delay across 
country borders. Next year (because of even more pressure) a german guy might 
have 2 days and a danish guy no chance at all. Probably Lars was the slowest 
danish payer, but he might have paid in advance of those last 75% german and 
swiss people I document above.

I think Patrick Gaumonds case is even worse. He didn't sign up AFAICS but 
maybe he would have it the quota-system I suggest in the end of this mail was 
in effect.

> If your theory about the banking time being longer is correct, why 
> are there people that made it from the same countries for all but one of
> those in the remaining 30%?

As I document above, it is not impossible, but delays makes is _harder_ for 
foreigners and why should it?
The delays are a fact, not a theory. Internally in Denmark I can transfer 
money within seconds unless it is weekend.

> What I am saying is, that it is just plain wrong that people from outside
> of Germany or Switzerland didn't have a chance to get a spot. If that was
> correct, 100% would have been from Switzerland and Germany.

That is what will happen next year if we don't chance procedure.

> Why didn't anyone comment on that months ago, if there is no online banking
> in Denmark? 

I'm sure I said that a faxed payment receipt should be valid proof of payment 
back in September because of these delays. Nobody asked more questions about 
why.

Every time I transfer money to abroad I have to:
a) Go to my bank and fill in a long paper form
b) Pay a total transfer fee of 15 euro regardless of amount
c) Do it on a bankday (mon-fri)
d) spend at least 40 minutes on this procedure, assuming lines in the bank and 
that my bank is luckily 700 meters away.

My bank doesn't offer online transfer to abroad (2nd largest bank in 
Denmark!). I have heard that Julles does (some lowlife jutland bank I 
guess :-)). However it just makes it even more clear that there is an unfair 
situation in play since we cannot fairly ask anyone to chance his bank to 
have access to online money transfer to abroad only for the sake of the 
snowboard tour.

> And why didn't anyone from Denmark pay on Friday then? All 
> necessary info was online! And again, how did those six Danes (not counting
> Kasper) get on the list mysteriously?

See above.

> > Being absent is something we cannot compensate for _as long as_ the time
> > of registration has been announced well in advance so people can take
> > precautions.
>
> That has been done on 25/04/2005! The T3BOARD Announcement including the
> date has been online since then!

Sorry, this was misunderstood. My reply was to Adrian who said "what about 
people who are absent" and I say "since they KNEW this since april they could 
take precautions to sign up as soon as it was possible" and obviously that 
worked fine. 
Lars was signed up as number 34 and according to your own numbers where 30 
people signed up within 10 minutes he must have been signing up within the 
first hour or so. I don't know when Lars actually stood in the bank and 
transferred money. Could have been so late that he really doesn't deserve the 
spot. Maybe he did it monday 10 am in the bank because he has no online 
possibilities to use in the weekend?

> > According to statistics we should have at most 50% germans. If there are
> > more they are overrepresented according to their community-percentage.
>
> Depends on which data you rely on. We also have an IP-log evaluation of TER
> downloads by country giving Germany a 57,9 share, the membership gives a
> third number. F.x. Last year Canada was heavily over represented (hi
> there!)... And then you also have to calculate the official attraction to
> winter sports factor (awf) by region into your estimate... You get the
> picture: this leads inevitably into bogus maths.

yes, you are right, there are many numbers to take offset in. And in fact my 
conclusion on this mail also turns my focus a little bit because of this. 
(And yes, the regional location plays a role as well, I agree).

>
> Let's get back to the basics: the snowboard tour is an alpine fun event.
> Alpine entails limited space, fun entails a limited number of people to
> those organizing it. 

Right.

> Some people will not be able to come, but not because 
> they did not get a chance.

yes, but an uneven chance.

> It is possible, but not automatically likely. Again, I find it quite unfair
> to assume the procedure was unfair without explaining how those people that
> made it on the list did it. My guess is, that they went to the bank
> (online) in time and that is something which can be expected without being
> unfair on our side.

No, it is not as I have stated above. Regardless of how you put it transfers 
from Denmark ARE slower than domestic transfers inside Germany. And I believe 
this had an impact in Lars' case!


Focus change:

Anyway, I have been looking at the participant list for the previous years and 
made some statistics. This is available at 
http://130.228.0.33/temp/snpartstat.pdf

In many ways the distribution of participants are in fact not that different 
between 2004, 2005 and 2006. Those years we have seen a german 
participant-percentage of 61%, 53% and 67% respectively. So I agree that the 
50% distribution I talked about is probably not a fair measure. Also, 
grouping german speaking countries (DE/AU/CH) shows that the percentages are 
83%, 77% and 85% respectively. Grouping DK/NL we have 13%, 12% and 13%.
I don't find this alarming, but what I do find alarming is that last year we 
had 12% people from "other countries" including spain, italy, slovakia, 
finland and canada and this year we have 2% and not a single one from the 
countries mentioned above!
With all respect for all my old german speaking friends on the participant 
list that I look forward to seeing, I must admit that germans are no news and 
it was always especially refreshing to have people from other countries with 
us! Think of how much it meant that someone from Canada was there last year, 
or spain, or italy etc. They were 12% of the participants but meant much more 
mentally to everyone.

I know that you (daniel) have previously considered how the snowboard tour 
could be less dominated by german speaking people. Last year a good trend was 
started by going from 83% german language speakers in 2004 to 77% in 2005, 
but in 2006 you will have a new record of 85% instead of more diversity.

I believe this perspective is different from the original discussion about 
payment. But for next year I would like to suggest the introduction of quota: 
We will have a maximum of 70% participants from german, austria and 
switzerland, max 10% from denmark and netherlands and the remaining 20% are 
reserved for people outside the countries. I think the diversity makes the 
snowboard tour better.

I would also like to note that the possibility of booking as "externals" in 
the area is more appealing to german/austrian/swiss people. For a Danish guy 
there is definitely a higher barrier to go to a german website for 
accomodation possibilities in the areas and make a booking. I think this 
applies to other nationalities as well. This again speaks in favour of 
reserving a certain number of seats for non-german speaking participants 
since german-speakings can more easily find their own arrangements as 
"externals". (I would like to see statistics on who were "externals" last 
year!)

Alternatively, it might simply be the time to consider if the german community 
should have their own? I mean, JH wrote that almost his entire company of 14 
people are coming. Its good for them to have a holiday togehter like that but 
maybe it is time to separate it with a local alpine even for DE/AU/CH and 
"start over" for the rest of us?


- kasper




>
> Cheers,
>
> Daniel

-- 
- kasper

-----------------
Think future, not feature