<div dir="ltr"><div>Conference committee folks,</div><div><br></div><div>As someone who just spent over $8000 on this past weeks conference, I should probably express a few thoughts on this topic. I'm sure that for some of you this is not a lot of money. But our little research lab and MapWindow project are on as much a shoestring as anyone. In any case, $8000 bought two airplane tickets to South Africa ($3000) lodging ($1000) per diem ($1000) a booth ($1500) and shwag ($1500). </div>
<div><br></div><div>Yeah, this was a lot of money for us, but what a great opportunity to meet with users and developers from that side of the world. Turns out that we actually had a bigger impact in South Africa than at some regional conferences since we were able to meet with lots of locals who are using our software - who would never go to a conference in the U.S. In other words, there is value is taking these tools to the distant corners of the earth (be it Salmon, Idaho or Cape Town South Africa) to reach people who can't come to us. So I would hate to see OSGeo limit FOSS4G venues to only places where lots of development work is going on.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Helena's idea of switching to every other year is actually a pretty good idea. We do that with our AWRA GIS and Water Resources conferences and our Environmental Modelling and Software Society meetings. In fact at this year's AWRA GIS conference there was a vote as to whether to move to a yearly conference. Almost everyone voted to stay bi-yearly. The expressed reasons included that it makes it a much more exciting meeting to go to because you can do a lot of work in 2 years so there's always lots of new stuff to see. </div>
<div><br></div><div>Distance is always going to be a problem for someone. But to be a truly world -wide organization I don't think OSGeo can or should try to limit distances for conferences. </div><div><br></div><div>
So, will we go to Australia next year? I hope so. Probably at least send one person. Will we sponsor a booth or a table? If the economy holds out and I still have funding... Would it be nice to meet in North America again? You bet. But not every year. In fact, holding this conference once every other year would be great by me. Maybe then the projects would hold project specific and/or regional meetings in the "off" years.</div>
<div><br></div><div>By the way, I hear from Ted and Brian that Cape Town was awesome, the conference was great, the entertainment was fun, the contacts were invaluable, and so forth. So thank you to all of you who organized this conference! I hope some of you who were there got to meet these guys and see where we're at with MapWindow. </div>
<div><br></div><div>- Dan</div><div><br></div><div>P.S. They lost our ISU banner in the airport shuttle van at the Cape Town airport. If anyone happens to have found that please let us know!</div><div><br></div><div><br>
</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 10:41 AM, Paul Ramsey <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:pramsey@cleverelephant.ca">pramsey@cleverelephant.ca</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 8:54 AM, Markus Neteler <<a href="mailto:neteler@osgeo.org">neteler@osgeo.org</a>> wrote:<br>
><br>
> Can we please return to the topic?<br>
<br>
Barriers to access:<br>
<br>
-- Distance<br>
<br>
This is fundamentally difficult to deal with. Once you get beyond a<br>
couple hundred miles, and start adding overnights, there is going to<br>
be a cost, which will be "in the hundreds" (pick your currency) to<br>
attending an event.<br>
<br>
The obvious solution is just smaller conferences, but that dilutes the<br>
attendance, and doesn't necessarily fulfill some of the goals of<br>
"getting everyone together". No regional conference is going to get<br>
the PostGIS team together -- we live in Victoria, Boston, the UK, etc.<br>
<br>
Another semi-solution is the one used by ApacheCon, which basically<br>
charges full commercial convention rates (about $1500+) to ordinary<br>
attendees (who are presumably from corporate and government agencies)<br>
and then comps and flies in select members of project teams to speak<br>
(and meet). O'Reilly conferences do a similar thing on a for-profit<br>
basis, charging ordinary goers high registration and using that to<br>
subsidize the "technical VIPs" who come and talk and share their<br>
knowledge.<br>
<br>
-- Registration<br>
<br>
As it stands, it is not financially feasible to give complimentary<br>
registration to more folks (see<br>
<a href="http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G2007_Discounts" target="_blank">http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G2007_Discounts</a> for examples of who<br>
got freebies in 2007, the list for 2008 is similar). However, it is<br>
easy enough to change that, simply raise the general registration and<br>
use the extra funds to widen the scope of people given comps.<br>
<br>
At that point, we enter new, uncharted waters: who, exactly, is<br>
eligible for special treatment, and how many of them will there be?<br>
Because we need to know how many new comps we have in order to raise<br>
the general admission price enough.<br>
<br>
-- Timing<br>
<br>
If it is students we care about, then the mid-week conference is a<br>
problem. Of course, the over-weekend conference is a barrier to<br>
family-men/women. So pick your poison. Our most egregious timing<br>
barrier to date was our fateful ability to schedule on top of InterGeo<br>
not once (2007), but twice (2008). (Hooray for us!)<br>
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</blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Daniel P. Ames PhD, PE<br>Department of Geosciences<br>Idaho State University - Idaho Falls<br><a href="mailto:amesdani@isu.edu">amesdani@isu.edu</a><br><a href="http://www.MapWindow.org">www.MapWindow.org</a><br>
<a href="http://www.Hydromap.com">www.Hydromap.com</a><br>
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