[Aust-NZ] Bid strategy for '09 FOSS4G conference

[Cameron Shorter]

I've been putting thought into how open Aust-NZ should be in building 
its FOSS4G '09 bid.

Advantages of being secretive:
* Other cities don't get our ideas and copy them.
* Other cities don't see our price and undercut us by a small margin.
* Other cities see our ideas and counter them.

Advantages of being open:
* We visibly demonstrate to the selectors that we have a powerful 
community behind our bid.
* If our good ideas are copied, then OSGeo as a whole benefits.
* Openness is a fundamental principle of OSGeo and Open Source in 
general and should be valued very highly by selectors.
* Consequently, other cities are likely to follow our lead and develop 
an Open bidding process, which will bring us all back to a level playing 
field.

So I propose:
1. We should be open about all organisational details, (where, who, 
what, dates, etc).
2. We should be secretive about specific prices until bid is put in. 
Pricing can be discussed openly in general terms, but not the final details.

Technically, I see us using a public email list for most discussions 
(this list will probably do the trick), a private list for sensitive 
discussions, and a public and private wiki to collaboratively build our 
documentation and thoughts.

I'm interested to hear others thoughts on this matter (international 
lurkers are welcome to chime in - just identify yourself as outside 
Australia/New Zealand).

Cameron Shorter wrote:
> 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