[Board] FOSS4G 2008 Status

[Paul Ramsey]

All,

I asked Gavin for some numbers to gauge the status of the conference
at this fairly early date. So far, things seem reasonable. There have
been some web site snafus which are being worked on, and in general I
think the OCS site is an aesthetic train wreck, but that's not the
LOCs fault.

- # of presentation abstracts submitted: 142
  General    82
  Academic   50
  Posters    10

So, a fair amount of interest, even though the submission dates were,
frankly, not that well advertised. With the extension, hopefully a few
more submissions, more than enough to be a little selective in
building the program.

- # of workshops submitted: 31

Lots of room to be selective in building the workshops program.

Sponsorship is still underperforming, with about $50K in sponsors
signed up so far, two international companies and one SA government
agency.
However, that should be offset by the exhibition area, which has five
stands booked at this point.

Registration is still very low. 385 people have done web site
sign-ups, but only 32 have registered for the conference thus far.
However, until the early bird deadline arrives the registration
numbers are pretty meaningless as predictor of anything.

I think the number of abstract submissions is a good sign, since
that's the only deadline that has passed. The total for '07 of posters
+ talks would have been around 230, so it's a fall off, but it's not a
quantum drop and the extension should add more.

P.