[Aust-NZ] Bidding for the '09 FOSS4G conference

[Cameron Shorter]

To bring people up to date on FOSS4G hosting:

Tim and I have been working with the The Sydney Convention and Visitors 
Bureau (SCVB) to put together a bid to host the FOSS4G conference in 
Australia.

We decided that we were not ready to put in a good bid for 2008, but put 
in a bid for 2009, which will hopefully improve our chances for 2009.

We had a meeting last Friday with Marie-Claire Henry and Josh Roberts 
from SCVB to work out our next steps and this is what we have decided so 
far:

1. Marie-Claire will be our SCVB contact who will help us through the 
process (free of charge - the SVCB is sponsored by various government 
tourist departments).

2. We'd like to engage a wider group of people to help guide SCVB. Tim 
should be setting up an email list for interested people to join. We 
would like to be very open in our decisions, but at the same time we 
will need to hide some details from our competitors. So the list will be 
available for Australia/NZ residents who show an interest in the event.

3. Marie-Claire has noted:
3.1 We should engage a Convension Organisor soon. She is going to get a 
list of Organisors which we can pick from. Please help us with this, we 
will probably be picking in the next few weeks.
3.2 For the size of the conference, we need to secure a venue early. 18 
months in advance is typical. So we should push OSGeo to award the 
conference earlier that 1 year in advance.
3.3 We should talk up Sydney at FOSS4G this year. Tim will be at FOSS4G, 
anyone else able to help?

4. We need to start building a network of interested partners. Tim has 
noted that Linux Australia has already shown interest which is useful 
since they have experience and resources in holding conferences.



Tim Bowden wrote:
> Now that bidding for the '08 FOSS4G conference has been decided (South
> Africa for those who were unaware) it's time to get our act together for
> bidding for the '09 conf.
>
> Holding the FOSS4G conference here in our region in '09 would provide a
> huge boost to the cause of open source GIS in Australia, New Zealand and
> the wider South East Asian region.  If we are to win the conf, we need
> to put together a top notch bid, so I'd like to invite everyone
> interested to join in forming a conf bidding team to work on the
> proposal.  I'm hoping the decision for the '09 conf will be made about
> March or April next year, so we don't have too long to put things
> together.
>
> I'd especially like to see some NZ'ers involved as the conf needs to
> answer the needs and interests from both sides of the Tasman.
>
> Regards,
> Tim Bowden
>
> _______________________________________________
> Aust-NZ mailing list
> Aust-NZ at lists.osgeo.org
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/aust-nz
>
>   


-- 
Cameron Shorter
Systems Architect, http://lisasoft.com.au
Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254