[OSGeo-Conf] RFP Evaluation method

Fri Jun 7 14:42:07 PDT 2019

Jonathan,

A great question to ask and for us to consider.

Short answer: I feel we should keep our voting process.

--

Long answer: I'll rephrase your question as "Can we define a selection 
process which is more trustworthy than a group of people?"

Defining a process: I think that writing an process which could 
differentiate between all the subtle factors which influences a good 
conference would be next to impossible, especially if trying to 
anticipate future factors as well. The best we can do is list selection 
criteria (as already in our RFQ docs) [1]. If we were to define a 
process, the next thing to happen is that bidding cities would try to 
game the system.

The trustworthiness of the conference committee: We deliberately stack 
our committee with ex-chairs of prior OSGeo conferences. This is a very 
difficult position to fill, and each chair learns a significant amount 
about running a conference in the process, and all the subtle things 
that make it great or bad. I feel these people tend to be very 
qualified, intrinsically motivated, and hence trustworthy decision makers.

So I'm also in favour of keeping the voting process from our conference 
committee.

However, I think there is always room to refine our selection criteria. 
One think I think we should add to our list is "Security and Inclusivity 
within the host country". At foss4g Dar es Salaam, we discovered there 
were local laws which discriminated against our LGBT community. Till, if 
you are updating the RFQ document, can you add this to your checklist of 
things to add.

Counter to Eli's suggestion that we haven't made a selection mistake: 
Foss4g 2012 was cancelled [2], which I feel we should consider a failure.

[1] 
https://svn.osgeo.org/osgeo/foss4g/rfp/2020/FOSS4G2020-request-for-proposal.pdf

[2] 
http://cameronshorter.blogspot.com/2012/08/analysing-downfall-of-foss4g-2012.html

On 8/6/19 7:16 am, Jonathan Moules wrote:
> Hi Till, Eli, All,
>
> > [Till] The fundamental idea behind the existing voting procedure is, 
> to make use of the knowledge of those, who already ran a conference 
> like this
>
> Agreed, and as I've already noted, what happens when you leave the CC? 
> You've already lost Cameron's expertise and that of those who don't 
> actually vote.
>
>
> > [Till] I do not have the feeling, that we in CC did fundamentally 
> wrong selections in the past years
>
> Well, from a sustainability perspective I beg to differ. While Calgary 
> does do sustainability well, the Halifax one was definitely a step 
> above. The fact that Calgary is an excellent candidate for "most 
> isolated large-city in North America outside of Anchorage (Alaska)" 
> (it's not even on the passenger rail network!) and honestly, I'm 
> unclear on why it was even allowed to be a candidate given you're 
> guaranteeing that people will only get there by flying. For a 
> conference like FOSS4G, that's several tens of thousands of tons of 
> extra CO2 added straight to the troposphere from folks who would/could 
> otherwise have taken public transport (the "local" contingent of the 
> conference). I mean, what's it going to be in 2023, Hawaii?
>
> This is also why I strongly disagree with Eli on this point:
>
> > [Eli] As far as I can tell (i.e. also none), "where I want to go on 
> vacation" is the most valid criteria that we have currently as the 
> substantive criteria in both cases are so excellent and near equivalent.
>
> Sustainability was a strong differentiator between the two proposals 
> and yet the least-sustainable proposal won, despite my non-member 
> sustainability questions. Alas I didn't notice the lack of rail 
> connection before the vote although I doubt that would have made a 
> difference. This is why in my view the current system doesn't work - 
> it's only selecting for the things that the committee care about and 
> given two otherwise near-identical proposals, the evidence would 
> suggest they don't seem to care about important things like 
> sustainability.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Jonathan
>
>
> On 2019-06-07 08:48, Till Adams wrote:
>> Dear all,
>>
>> I totall agree with Steven and Eli. The fundamental idea behind the
>> existing voting procedure is, to make use of the knowledge of those, who
>> already ran a conference like this. And this - I can tell you - is a
>> bunch of experience ;-)
>>
>> Any system we might make use of has it's strengths and weaknesses. Also,
>> I do not have the feeling, that we in CC did fundamentally wrong
>> selections in the past years, as every conference I can remember, was a
>> success.
>>
>> Till
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Am 07.06.19 um 00:18 schrieb Eli Adam:
>>> Hi Jonathan,
>>>
>>> On Thu, Jun 6, 2019 at 11:44 AM Jonathan Moules
>>> <jonathan-lists at lightpear.com> wrote:
>>>> Hi Steven,
>>>>
>>>> Indeed, and I would then suggest taking all of that hard earned 
>>>> experience, knowledge, priorities, and weightings and putting them 
>>>> inside an objective, measurable framework where it is less 
>>>> susceptible to biases, both conscious and not.
>>>>
>>>> This would produce a much more open process, more in line with the 
>>>> O in OSGeo and the "open philosophy" part of the OSGeo Mission 
>>>> Statement. It also means experience and lessons learnt aren't lost 
>>>> when people leave the voting pool as with Cameron's input for 
>>>> instance.
>>>>
>>>> Depending on the scoring metrics used, it would also allow for a 
>>>> more direct comparison between proposals. And as a bonus, the 
>>>> scoring/metrics being open means it's open to comment and feedback 
>>>> from everyone, meaning the process is now more "participatory 
>>>> community driven development" (again, straight from the 
>>>> one-sentence Mission Statement).
>>>>
>>> I do find the questions from voting and non-voting members to be the
>>> most useful part of the process.  Generally the list seems very open
>>> to sincere participation from everyone.
>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>>
>>>> Jonathan
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 2019-06-06 19:18, Steven Feldman wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Jonathan
>>>>
>>>> Each member of the committee will bring their own priorities and 
>>>> experiences to the voting process.
>>>>
>>>> So for you the environmental considerations might be paramount 
>>>> while for someone else delivering a highly affordable delegate 
>>>> price may be their priority or another might be concerned about 
>>>> overall financial risk to OSGeo and someone else might be very 
>>>> focussed on diversity. We each have a different set of criteria and 
>>>> we also apply different levels of importance to those criteria.
>>>>
>>>> The current system allows each voter to apply their own criteria 
>>>> and weightings and to select the proposal that they think best, the 
>>>> majority vote then wins. I know when I vote I usually have a good 
>>>> feeling for one of the proposals based on a mix of factors, you 
>>>> could say that was unconscious bias, I would say it was a 
>>>> combination of instinct and experience
>>>>
>>>> cheers
>>>> ______
>>>> Steven
>>>>
>>>> Unusual maps in strange places -  mappery.org
>>>>
>>>> Subscribe to my weekly “Maps in the Wild” newsletter
>>>>
>>>> On 6 Jun 2019, at 17:55, Jonathan Moules 
>>>> <jonathan-lists at lightpear.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi List,
>>>>
>>>> Following the protracted discussion about voters in the parallel 
>>>> thread it occurs to me that it's begging the question that voting 
>>>> is good.
>>>>
>>> I'm not quite sure which thread you mean but yes, there have been many
>>> voters/voting/etc discussions on this list and others.  A recent
>>> thread that I started was here,
>>> https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/conference_dev/2018-December/005036.html 
>>>
>>>   I didn't hear many viable suggestions for different methods from that
>>> thread.  I'd like to hear more.  I'd particularly like to hear Paul's
>>> thoughts that he warned would be the result of an entire day of
>>> thinking!  (or because he has 2-3 iterations of experience of starting
>>> conferences like this)
>>>
>>>> Why exactly do we have voting for this? Surely the better and (far) 
>>>> less subjective option is to an objective scoring system by which 
>>>> to measure the quality of the submissions? There's still element of 
>>>> subjectivity of course ("is this answer a 6/10 or a 7/10?"), but 
>>>> it's largely objective, measurable, and transparent.
>>>>
>>> This raises a good question, "why are we voting?" Historically, we
>>> voted because selecting FOSS4G was key to OSGeo's financial future.
>>> This is still the case (more detailed in the referenced thread) but
>>> overwhelmingly we are selecting between multiple nearly equivalent
>>> high quality options.
>>>
>>> While your proposal is perhaps an improvement (to formality and
>>> openness) to the existing voting, it is still substantially the same
>>> thing and I don't see the point of this method any more than our
>>> existing method.  We can vote like we do now and more or less
>>> arbitrarily select one very good proposal over another very good
>>> proposal.  Or we can go through a systematic open scoring method and
>>> score one very good proposal 92/100 and the other very good proposal
>>> 93/100; that seems like an equally arbitrary selection method to me.
>>> In the case of very good proposals, the selection method does not
>>> matter since the result is the same (very good proposal meeting all
>>> the criteria and leading to a very successful conference and sound
>>> finances).  We could flip a coin or draw from a hat.
>>>
>>>
>>>> As far as I can tell from the transparency in the current voting 
>>>> (i.e., none) and reading the proposals (half of which usually reads 
>>>> like a tourist brochure), votes could easily currently be getting 
>>>> cast via "I want to go on holiday there next year". And while I'm 
>>>> not suggesting that's actually happening intentionally, it's almost 
>>>> certainly going to be a subconscious bias in the current process.
>>>>
>>> As far as I can tell (i.e. also none), "where I want to go on
>>> vacation" is the most valid criteria that we have currently as the
>>> substantive criteria in both cases are so excellent and near
>>> equivalent.
>>>
>>> (The other) Maria wrote:
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 6:50 AM María Arias de Reyna 
>>> <delawen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> I also think this is a problem. Choosing the foss4g venue is one of 
>>>> the most relevant tasks of OSGeo because it decides where and how 
>>>> the community is going to grow that year.
>>> Geography of past conferences is certainly one criteria that I use,
>>> wanting to bring OSGeo and FOSS4G to new areas.  Other than
>>> geography*, I've not found many valid criteria to vote on. I've not
>>> heard many proposals either.  * this is again in the case of multiple
>>> near equivalent high quality proposals.  In the case of proposals that
>>> don't meet the important criteria, then it is an easy decision but
>>> that is not the situation we usually find ourselves in.  So in my
>>> opinion, we mostly have one valid (but rather weak) criteria for
>>> evaluation.  That's why I want to hear more criteria or even better
>>> new selection methods entirely.
>>>
>>> Best regards, Eli
>>>
>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>>
>>>> Jonathan
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 2019-06-05 08:07, Till Adams wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Dear CC!
>>>>
>>>> I had some minutes and started an *early* prepare of the call for 
>>>> 2021.
>>>>
>>>> I added this WIKI page here:
>>>>
>>>> https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G_2021_Bid_Process
>>>>
>>>> Please check carefully whether the dates fit for you and of course for
>>>> other errors.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I will prepapre the needed documents in the next days and send them 
>>>> to you.
>>>>
>>>> Have a great day!
>>>>
>>>> Till
>>>>
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