<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">I think it should be pretty obvious that I'm definitely in favor and will support this. It is a great opportunity given the cost and location and it will give us a North American conference this year. Given the budget cuts in the US Federal government there is a dramatic increase in their interest of open source solutions. This will be an excellent opportunity to showcase what we can do.<div><br></div><div>Mark</div><div><br></div><div><br><div><div>On Jan 19, 2012, at 6:19 PM, Paul Ramsey wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div>Hi Board,<br><br>Rather suddenly, due to an existing event in Washington DC being<br>cancelled, an opportunity to have a FOSS4G-NA event has come up.<br>OpenGeo and RadiantBlue are leading the process right now, in terms of<br>the nuts and bolts of getting together a venue and bootstrapping the<br>start-up costs.<br><br>The dates are April 10 and 11.<br>The location is Washington DC at the downtown convention center there<br><<a href="http://g.co/maps/76jhc">http://g.co/maps/76jhc</a>>.<br>The pricing will be $120 / day, early bird.<br>If we make a profit, it'll be banked for a future event by the NA chapter.<br>The program will not include workshops this time around, for simplicity.<br><br>I am trying to put together a conference committee that reflects the<br>OSGeo community, as well as some new voices like the WhereCamp folks<br>in the east, and folks with ties into the government. While I imagine<br>the content will be the usual FOSS4G fare, we're trying to keep in<br>mind that the audience will be very DC-centric, in the same way our<br>audience in Denver had a strong western flavour.<br><br>I've asked Daniel and Peter to join the committee, and I hope they<br>will if they have time. If they don't, I'll be looking for other folks<br>like Dan, who can represent the developer community and Peter who can<br>represent the user community of OSGeo.<br><br>This is coming together a little crazily given the timelines, but I<br>think it'll be a good event, like the early MUM events, and provide a<br>basis for a more formal ongoing routine in the future.<br><br>I'm sure you're full of questions, please let them out.<br><br>Yours,<br><br>Paul<br>_______________________________________________<br>Board mailing list<br><a href="mailto:Board@lists.osgeo.org">Board@lists.osgeo.org</a><br>http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/board<br></div></blockquote></div><br></div></body></html>