[Aust-NZ] FOSS4G-ANZ?

[Cameron Shorter]

Hi all,

My sincere apologies for missing almost all of the FOSS4G kickoff 
meeting. I was away from my desk at work and missed my alarm and then am 
embarrassed to admit that I forgot until the meeting was almost over.

 From reading the meeting logs I have a few comments:

* I learned from FOSS4G 2009 that we in Australia/New Zealand should not 
use US/Europe metrics as an indicator of potential attendance. FOSS4G 
draws much of its attendance from a local audience. US/Europe has a 
large local and regional audience to draw upon. Aust/NZ have a lot of 
fish (and sheep) within our region.

* I'd err on aiming small and low cost for the first event. Probably in 
the order of the 60 to 120 range. I'd suggest we see if we can keep 
price: $0<price<$100 per person. (This will be hard if we get big).

* Re managing the books: I'd approach SSSI and ask if they wish to 
process the books for us, and if they do, what would be their 
conditions. If conditions are too onerous we look elsewhere. We could 
potentially have a University or a friendly government department or 
private company manage the books. Now is a good time to put out feelers 
to the friendly people you know to see if they are interested.

* Re location: I'd look out for Universities in the first instance, but 
would also consider government departments, or friendly companies who 
often have a meeting room we could use for free or cheaply if we keep 
the event small. Again, worth putting out feelers.

* Re communication channels. I suggest it is best to make use of a 
public archived forum for any decision making discussion (Hence sending 
this email to a public forum). I'm mildly in favour of our existing 
OSGeo Aust-NZ email list, backed by an irc channel on freenode. Probably 
irc://freenode.net#foss4g-austnz. It seems there is a preference for 
slack, and I'm ok with that. I suggest that decisions are backed up by 
the public email list. Ie, for any major decision send a MOTION:... to 
the email list, with a set period to respond (1 week usually, or 48 
hours if urgent), and get all committee members to vote: +1 +0 0 -0 -1. 
Adopt a process like: https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Live_GIS_Management

* Re using a wiki.Yes, there will be no problems in using the OSGeo wiki 
and I think that is a good idea. We should officially ask the OSGeo 
Conference committee. I'd suggest a motion of:

Motion A: to send to OSGeo Aust-NZ email list

1. That the OSGeo-Aust-NZ local chapter set up a 
https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G-Aust-NZ. After the conference, we 
will migrate this page to be a jump page to have a separate page for 
each year.

2. That we will additionally make use of google sheets and google docs 
as required which will be referenced from the wiki.

Motion B: Assuming the Aust-NZ list agree with motion A, move to Motion 
B, which is to request use of https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G-Aust-NZ 
from the OSGeo conference committee. (This is just a formal thing, as we 
could just go ahead and do it).



-- 
Cameron Shorter
Technology Demystifier, Learnosity
Open Technologies Consultant

M +61 (0) 419 142 254