[Board] Fwd: [FOSS4G2007] Fwd: informations needed

[Jo Walsh]

Nod, Paul thanks for the nudge and Arnulf thanks for the response.
This kind of issue came up last year, when it was way too late to do
anything about it...

And yes, if the Foundation had the means to offer support directly it
would turn into a lottery or a first-come thing and be perceptibly
unfair. This is no reason to do nothing. If OSGeo could act as a
broker between sponsoring organisations and individuals... 

Is this the sort of thing the conference committee wants to think
about, or work on directly? E.g. if general agreement that a support
structure for travel/accoms/entrance concessions is a good idea, who
would take responsibility for it? Could this almost be treated like
the Google SoC programme with some of the same side-effects?

Geh, i am looking for sponsorship to get to Canada myself, but also
trying to scope out other potential support networks and individual
orgs rather than hitting up the resource-scarce foundation directly :)

On Mon, Apr 16, 2007 at 09:31:05PM +0200, Arnulf Christl (OSGeo) wrote:
> I have been pondering this for some time. My idea is that OSGeo Members
> who are active in committees, workgroups, OSGeo projects or organizing
> events should be able to request for funding mostly to travel to meetings
> if their financial situation otherwise does not permit them to attend. No
> idea how to formalize that but initially it should should suffice to
> manage on a basis of trust.
> 
> On the other hand I would like to keep OSGeo's budget low. Therefore these
> funding requests should be directed at sponsors. Last year we (the
> WhereGroup) sponsored travel costs and admission for two people who helped
> staff the OSGeo booth at the Intergeo trade fair. People did two days of
> staffing and had one day off to attend presentations.
> 
> On a comparably tiny scale we also did this at the last FOSSGIS
> conference. People received one of those wonderful black OSGeo t-shirts
> for free if they staffed the OSGeo booth at the conference. Actually in
> Germany you can *only* get one of those t-shirts if you get active for
> OSGeo...
> 
> On a larger scale this could develop into a grant program but I think we
> are not ready yet to do that. And I think that we should only sponsor
> people who actively contribute to one of the official OSGeo projects and
> committees.
> 
> Best regards,
> Arnulf.
> 
> >> Begin forwarded message:
> >>
> >>> From: < ... @yahoo.fr>
> >>> Date: April 16, 2007 10:18:25 AM PDT (CA)
> >>> To: sponsors at foss4g2007.org
> >>> Subject: informations needed
> >>>
> >>> Hi,
> >>> i would like to know more about the opportunity to find fund to go
> >>> to this meeting. I am coming from developing country and I am a
> >>> user of open source software.
> >>> Thank you
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> FOSS4G2007 mailing list
> >> FOSS4G2007 at lists.refractions.net
> >> http://lists.refractions.net/mailman/listinfo/foss4g2007
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Board mailing list
> > Board at lists.osgeo.org
> > http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/board
> >
> 
> 
> -- 
> Arnulf Christl
> http://www.wheregroup.com
> 
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