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

[Frank Warmerdam]

Jo Walsh wrote:
> dear all,
> 
> 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

Jo,

If VisCom (now the Marketting Committee?) wanted to fund this
conference, I would be fine with them spending out of next
years tentative budget.

> 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?

Local chapters collecting sponsorship or other funds for local
promotion is certainly a reasonable approach, though it does not
seem inappropriate to me to approach viscom for funding for strategically
important conferences.  It would be up to viscom to prioritize how they
want to spend their budget.

> I also note it seems to be in the finance committee's remit to set and
> release a definite budget to the Marketing Committee, AFAIK we/it is/are
> planning to meet within the next couple of weeks.

I believe the finance committee would be expected to propose a budget
to the full board for approval, and then monitor that the foundation is
operating within it.

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org