[North America] Initial thoughts on the first North AmericaRegional conference

[Clarke, Trevor]

I like the idea of a spring conference to offset FOSS4G (it works quite
well with ASPRS who run 2 per year). Perhaps a smaller conference the
first year; perhaps a couple of days with a day of workshops instead of
a full week.

 

As for the financials, perhaps a portion of the profits could go
directly to the Beijing conference committee and offer something to
encourage participation in both. (for example, attend North America and
receive a complimentary workshop of your choice in Beijing)

 

From: northamerica-bounces at lists.osgeo.org
[mailto:northamerica-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Mark Lucas
Sent: Friday, November 18, 2011 11:48 AM
To: northamerica at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: [North America] Initial thoughts on the first North
AmericaRegional conference

 

I'd like to begin the discussion on organizing a North America Regional
conference this year.

 

I suggest for the first NA event we take a fairly conservative approach
and go out of our way to support and not dilute the efforts required to
pull off a successful FOSS4G 2012 Beijing event.  Statistics clearly
show that most of the annual attendees for any given event come from
within the region where the conference is being held.  But there is also
the amount of contributor bandwidth that is needed to successfully
organize these events.  In that light, here are some initial
suggestions:

 

1) Deconflict the schedule.   Perhaps schedule our regional conference
around May (I believe Beijing is Sep)

2) Use GITA with our collective experience of the Denver FOSS4G 2011
event to minimize risk (outsource much of the organization and logistics
to GITA again)

3) Plan for a smaller, less complex event (not as many parallel tracks,
maybe in conjunction with another planned activity)

4) Plan on using some of the profits to sponsor OSGeo. 

5) Do what we can to feed the larger FOSS4G Beijing event

 

Then we can plan a larger conference early 2013 for North America -
we'll have more time, resources, and experience under out belt

 

Of course, taking this approach shortens the timeline for getting to the
first conference, so we will need to get going.  I plan on discussing
this with Peter Batty (ran the foss4g 2011 conference) and Jeff McKenna
(helped organize the last one and leading the efforts for Beijing
coordination) to get their input.

 

I'd like to hear everyone's initial comments on this approach.

 

Mark

 

 

 

 

 




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