[OSGeo-Board] Motion: Promotion and Visibility Committee

[Gary Lang]

This is very good, but we should do this with board approval of every
dollar spent.

Gary

-----Original Message-----
From: Arnulf Christl (CCGIS) [mailto:arnulf.christl at ccgis.de] 
Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2006 6:49 AM
To: board at board.osgeo.org
Subject: [OSGeo-Board] Motion: Promotion and Visibility Committee

Hi,
I want to start a Promotion and Visibility Group. Please vote with a -1
0
+1 to get the text below pasted to the Wiki (any changes and addtitions
will be done there).

+1 from Arnulf.

+++

Motion: Promotion and Visibility Group

To spread word and build a strong recognition of the Open Source
Geospatial Foundation major events should be covered professionally.
Smaller events and local conventions in many cases already get covered
by associated members (friends of the foundation). They should receive
advertising material (flyers, handouts, etc. at a later stage maybe even
demo CDs).


== Activities ==
Several levels of activity should be addressed to support advertising
the OSGeo Foundation depending on the character of the event to take
place.
* Web site linking
* Create and provide paperwork (ads, flyers, posters, information
brochures)
* Giveaways (focused on larger events with special OS affinity)
* Booth operation (large events)
* Conference organisation (culmination of efforts, this at the FOSS4G)

== Linking ==
A lot of good advertisement is created by organic linking (search
engines find and recognize OSGeo links and rate them as highly
relevant). Some know-how of the inner workings of search engines helps.
Link the corresponding web pages. It should be avoided to create yet
another mega event planner though. Only events that have a special focus
on OS GIS should be included. Maybe a regional differentiation would
make a lot of sense (see Motion: [[Regional Groups]]).

== Presentations ==
Especially the trustees and interim board members should feel obliged to
present, promote and support the dissemination of the OSGeo Foundation
idea wherever they are. This includes:
* Talks and presentations at conferences
* Rund workshops at conventions
* Operate a booth at exhibitions

=== Presentation Material ===
A central document directory should feature presentations about the
OSGeo.
All presentations should be licensed as GNU FDL (or appropriate
alternative) to ensure that they are freely available and recognition of
the authors cannot be ommitted.

=== Posters, Give Aways, Flyers ===
As soon as stable version of the logo and corporate (eeeck!) design is
available it should be used throughout every written document or
presentation. Maybe it will be necessary to hire professionals to this
although we should not underestimate the creativity of the hackers
sitting in the projects. It should be possible that every project
maintains a certain degree of freedom regarding their outward
presentation.

==== Notice ====
Please do not create PPTs or PDFs any other closed format. (Motion by
Arnulf to make this currently personal opinion a foundation directive).
This might seem a minor problem, but it is actually not, closed formats
are show stoppers. The preferred format would be HTML, so that it can be
directly linked, searched and viewed at the OSGeo web site. Documents
should be managed as code in the SVN with prototype, beta and stable
versioning to ensue high quality. Initial contents can be developed in
the Wiki collaboratively.

=== Talks, Discussions, Interviews ===
Every chance to present the OSGeo should be taken, every simple link to
the OSGeo website is another 2 ct. adding to publicity. This fact should
be stressed in every aspect, this is the primary food for search engine
ranking.

=== Local Chapters ===
Individuals, businesses and local user groups who present their services
for and with OSGeo Software should be invited to distribute written
material, feature posters, etc.

== Timetable ==
A timetable should be set up showing where OSGeo members, trustees and
officials meet or give presentations. This timetable should be presented
in a planner and in professional map services using the OSGeo
technology.

=== Web Map Timetable ===
For the time being I would suggest to set it up Wiki style with low
overhead as we have eveything needed to do this up and running at 98%
24/7 at low cost. Once we manage to get an infrastrcuture running under
the OSGeo hood it shold be moved there. Then we can also add security
mechanisms to ensure privacy and prevent spatial spam.

== Conventions, Conferences, Exhibitions covered by OSGEO == (this would
probably show up as a separate page. After half a year it wold be split
into archive, current and future sections).

+++

Arnulf is going to be at the following events this year anyway. Except
for the CORP and CeBIT I have already reserved a slot for an OSGeo
presentation in the main tracks.

* CORP (Vienna, Austria - thats where I currently am)
* FOSSGIS (Bonn, Germany - I had this already on announce but got pulled
back by DanielB)
* CeBIT (Hannover, Germany)
* AGIT (Salzburg, Austria)
* FOSS4G (Lausanne, Switzerland)

This would be a place where I believe some of you might also go. Anybody
interested?
* http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/euos2006/create
This is something that we should coordinate, to not show up in groups,
hence the Wiki:

There are more, mostly local German ones, they would belong in the local
chapter section:
* GeoMV (Rostock, Germany)
* ...





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