On 09/22/2017 04:04 PM, Bryce Harrington wrote:
Does this thinking make sense? I don't want to proceed with putting out a request if I'm not convincing enough to ensure we're on the same page here. But if you are willing to give it a shot and will support this plan, I'm prepared to put this call for sponsors next week.
I agree with you, especially that time is the critical resource. My concern would be that we send out an email saying "we need this." Then a month's time we end up sending another email saying "Just kidding, what we really *need* is this." etc. etc. I think we end up destroying our own credibility.
So I think that we should, in the initial proposal we should list but have less detail about options that we'd also consider acceptable. Worst case is that we turn someone down who can offer one of those because we got a better offer. But at least we don't end up running some sort of Dutch Auction of server donations.
You're better at text than me, but spitballing: "We need to have hosting for these things: X, Y, Z. Ideally we could put them on a single machine to lower admin overhead. We think that machine would look like: ABC. We'd be happy for other proposals or offers for one or more of the services independently, especially if they came with some administration support, but are hoping to keep things as simple as possible."
Ted