[Board] Sponsorship funding and value for money

[Dave McIlhagga]

As Paul points out, it boils down to what we want to be when we grow  
up. :)

Personally, I think a good starting point though is both a home for  
open source geospatial technologies, and fostering adoption of these  
technologies through some mix of community building and promotional  
activities. I do think having Tyler has made a huge impact in simply  
coordinating the many many activities that are ongoing in this space.  
This was draining our precious volunteer efforts (especially from the  
Board) and has made for what I think has been a much smoother 2007  
then we had in 2006.

One thing is clear, if we want a Foundation that will continue to  
have an ED to run it's day to day affairs -- we need to get "Beyond  
Autodesk" as a majority source of operational funding for the  
organization. That will mean as Jo pointed out, a concerted effort -  
led by Tyler (probably in the range of about 20% of this time)  
dedicated to fundraising. We at the board have to support this effort  
-- but none of us can put in the dedicated time that is necessary to  
make this effort successful.

Thoughts? Tyler - do you have any thoughts on this?

Dave



On 17-Dec-07, at 1:55 PM, Paul Ramsey wrote:

> Excuse snipping, please read parent for full details!
>
> On 16-Dec-07, at 10:13 AM, Jo Walsh wrote:
>
>>  Are we investing our money well now?
>
> Possibly not. Given our current sponsorship model ("benign halo")  
> the best place to invest our money (which is to say, our ED's time,  
> given the general shape of our expenditures) would be in increasing  
> the profile of OSGeo in places that might not know anything about  
> geo at all, so that the "halo" is larger.  Again, following the  
> example of the OGC makes sense... they are very good at placing  
> articles in all kinds of places, pushing their brand out into as  
> many media opportunities as they can.  A lot can be done by writing  
> interesting articles and getting them into media -- media like free  
> content, and we like to get our content published, so it's a match  
> made in heaven.
>
>> Well, I know that the expand-or-contract debate has been a constant
>> thread through OSGeo's history, and I don't want to see simply yet
>> another iteration of it now. But i see the sponsor-security conundrum
>> above as likely to limit options and force decisions in a year. I  
>> want
>> us to work with Tyler to find ways in which his ED work can show more
>> measurable public impact and return on investment.
>
> Here's some interesting info:
>
> http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/press/releasedetail.cfm? 
> ReleaseID=281676
>
> And some depressing info:
>
> http://www.apache.org/foundation/thanks.html
>
> Even the best possible realization of the minimalist vision, by the  
> largest minimalist practitioner, is pretty small, and tightly tied  
> to companies "doing the right thing" for very abstract, non- 
> measurable reasons.
>
> By contrast, here's a serious pay-to-play foundation:
>
> http://www.eclipse.org/membership/showMembersWithTag.php? 
> TagID=strategic
>
> Raison d'etre, raison d'etre... only the answer to that question  
> will provide our direction.
>
> P.
>
>> This has been an awkward email to write, but I hope you will  
>> understand.
>>
>
> Thanks Jo.
>
> P
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