How do we make the partner decision to go with a skeleton core team model work
Some years back Dave presented partners with the option of finding money to continue funding the core team or for it to be cut back to a skeleton team. At the time there were a lot of discussions like 'If you want me to put in an extra $10,000 these are the things I want'. In fairly short order the first part of that statement got dropped and we wound up with an implicit decision to have a core team - but partner expectations of what it would deliver actually appeared to grow rather than shrink.
I think we need to get an honest appraisal of what we actually have - my guess is that partner + membership fees cover infrastructure, managing release process and continuous integration having CT available to provide technical leadership and mentorship, security team over-sight, extension eco-system support, partner and community communications, and sprint attendance. Anything above that, including the time the core team contributes to what I call 'product maintenance' is probably being funded from additional core team earnt funds. (athough CT does contribute to product maintenance I don't know that time is funded from partner & member fees).
So I feel like the number one theme of the conference should be how to require less of the core team. I am very conscious that it often takes more core team time when the community does the work - drupal 8 is a possible example - so we should fund the core team at higher levels in the short term if the community is taking on more.