[Board] Re: [Marketing] this issue of sponsorship for OSGeo presence at conferences

[Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo)]

On 10-Oct-07, at 11:02 AM, Jo Walsh wrote:

> I popped my head in meeting of the Marketing committee at a sad moment
> earlier where Yves Jacolin et al are asking for supporting budget to
> put up an OSGeo presence in an "Open Source Village" at a big vendor
> conference in Tunis. They have matching funds even from one of the
> french companies that is attending there.
> But VisCom does not have a budget to dispose of right now.
> http://logs.qgis.org/osgeo/%23osgeo.2007-10-10.log
>
> It could help out a bit in terms of making brochures and
> liveCDs/installer CDs available for such ventures. There is a lot of
> interest in this sort of thing and the measured response seems to be
> "Organise with your local osgeo chapter, approach local companies..."
> Perhaps the SPD could be used to help that happen?

This is a good time for the Marketing committee to re-group and  
discuss the focus of the committee and its budget.  Last time the  
committee worked out a budget, there was consensus to use a portion  
to help support 'local' events - i.e. sending someone to an event or  
helping with minor donations to handle printing brochures, building a  
presence, etc.

Even when we do get our budget allocation there will still be the  
issue of how to best direct the funds for the greatest marketing  
benefit.  For example, Arnulf has experience finding ways for events  
to self-fund their outreach, but do we want all local events to have  
to do this or not.

Over the past year, VisCom's was very much event focused.  After the  
last board meeting I think it was clear that developing marketing  
material was seen as more of a priority and perhaps events will take  
a back seat to that now.  If so, this refocus should probably be  
discussed further.  Perhaps Jeroen's discussion thread hits on this  
enough and we need a plan.

Of course, there will always be questions about how to pick/choose  
events to help fund. And there will not always be local (geographic)  
chapters to help manage these kinds of decisions.  But I don't want  
to just toss the idea aside without further discussion.  We should  
have a policy so that folks like Yves know whether or not our  
committee will even consider funding local marketing events.

Sincerely,
Tyler