[OSGeo-Conf] FOSS4G Handbook - Financial expectations

[Venkatesh Raghavan]

Hi Cameron,

My comments inline.

On 9/9/2016 9:05 PM, Cameron Shorter wrote:
> Hi Venka,
>
> Thanks for suggesting specific ideas to implement.
>
> For this email thread, I'd like to focus on your suggestions related to
> financial expectations, so we can take it through to resolution. Namely,
> your item 5. Defining how profit should be returned to OSGeo.
>
> I suggest it is safer to define budget returned to OSGeo as a percentage
> of profit. As profit closely aligns with number of attendees, profit
> will be larger for larger events. Europe and US have historically
> attracted larger attendance than "Rest of World" and hence will return
> larger profit. As such, OSGeo should expect to earn less in "Rest of
> World" years.

Yes, I agree with above. However "Rest of the World" include only 
low-income countries and not high-income countries like Australia, 
Japan, Korea etc. FOSS4G Conferences in low-income countries may spend 
less (lower venue and food costs) and also earn less compared to events
in Europe and North America.

> I thought the RFP defined an expected budget to be returned to OSGeo
> under conservative estimates, but I can't find reference to it. (Maybe
> someone else can point to it).
>
> For management of special interest programs and sponsorship, I suggest
> refer to the email thread "FOSS4G Simplicity" started by Eli Adam,
> suggesting the be coordinated outside of the FOSS4G LOC (Like the
> academic track).

I agree to making thinks easier and simpler coordinating Academic Track,
Awards, Travel Grants outside the LoC.

Best

Venka

>
> On 9/09/2016 10:03 AM, Venkatesh Raghavan wrote:
>> My Comments inline.
>>
>> On 9/9/2016 7:40 AM, Steven Feldman wrote:
>>> Maria
>>>
>>> Nice image, what are you suggesting in terms of the RfP? ______
>>> Steven
>>>
>>>
>>>> On 8 Sep 2016, at 22:03, Maria Antonia Brovelli
>>>> <maria.brovelli at polimi.it> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> <equity.jpg>
>>>>
>>>> Dear Cameron I prefer to take into account the differences among
>>>> countries. We want to elicit people developing and using open
>>>> source and we want to walk all together toward this result.
>>>> Equality often is not the best choice. Best regards Maria
>>
>> +1 for Maria's suggestion.
>>
>> I would suggest the following;
>>
>> 1) There was some comment on issue of too many people
>> requesting for free conference passes.
>> We need to clearly decide a guideline for offering free passes.
>> Free passes only offered to main Workshop Trainer, Keynote speakers and
>> student volunteers? Apart from that *no one* gets a free pass.
>>
>> 2) continue the discounted conference fee model for
>> low-income countries. This model has been successfully
>> used in FOSS4G-2015
>>
>> 3) Offer Travel support only for participants who are
>> have their presentation accepted at the FOSS4G conference.
>>
>> 4) Are we considering live streaming in future FOSS4G events?
>> In that case, request local chapters to organize local "FOSS4GFest"
>> during the duration of the main FOSS4G Conference and
>> take advantage of watching the live-streaming along with
>> the local community members who are unable to physically make it
>> to the FOSS4G event.
>>
>> 5) Consider recommending LoC to return a minimum fixed amount
>> of profit to OSGeo. Taking into account, that OSGeo annual
>> budget for 2015 is $75,000, we could consider having $50K-$60K
>> returned from the profit to OSGeo foundation when FOSS4G is
>> organized in high-income countries and $25K-$30K when FOSS4G
>> is organized in low-income countries (they can retain part of
>> the profit for organizing events to grow local communities, but
>> should submit a budget report in subsequent FOSS4G conferences
>> as to how the profits were used). This will help the foundation to
>> sustain the "Travel Grant", "Student Award" and "Code Sprint" at
>> FOSS4G events.
>>
>> 6) If the LoC of FOSS4G event is able to generate more profit
>> that stated in item 5 above, let them have a say in planning
>> how such "extra" profit will be used in future.
>>
>> 7) Consider a upper cap on the conference registration fee.
>> I would suggest $100/day of conference event when organized
>> in high-income countries. This would be much lower when FOSS4G
>> is organized in a low-income country
>>
>> Best
>>
>> Venka
>>
>>
>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Sent from my Samsung device
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -------- Original message -------- From: Cameron Shorter
>>>> <cameron.shorter at gmail.com> Date: 08/09/2016 22:53 (GMT+01:00) To:
>>>> conference <conference_dev at lists.osgeo.org> Subject: Re:
>>>> [OSGeo-Conf] FOSS4G Handbook - Financial expectations
>>>>
>>>> Ok, lets start working through Steven's list one item at a time,
>>>> starting a new email thread for each.
>>>>
>>>> Once we have resolution (probably concluding with a vote) we can
>>>> finalise it in the foss4g handbook.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 8/09/2016 9:12 PM, Steven Feldman wrote:
>>>>>> 1) Overall financial expectations re surplus and sharing of
>>>>>> surplus with OSGeo - possibly setting slightly different
>>>>>> expectations for RoW to NA & EU
>>>>
>>>> We have draft principles on Finances in the handbook here:
>>>> https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G_Handbook#Finances
>>>> <https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G_Handbook#Finances>
>>>>
>>>> I suggest using this existing text as the basis for guidance. I
>>>> personally think it has the right principles in place. In
>>>> particular, it is recommending each conference aim to hand over a
>>>> fixed percentage of profits as surplus to OSGeo. 85% is suggested.
>>>> I prefer this advise over the suggestion that low income countries
>>>>  retain more profit.
>>>>
>>>> -- Cameron Shorter M +61 419 142 254
>>>>
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