[Board] Teach-in 2009

[Paul Ramsey]

Jo,

On Mon, May 26, 2008 at 1:43 PM,  <jo at frot.org> wrote:

> My concerns about pursuing this model fall into roughly 3 groups:
> 1. Risk of withdrawal of resources from main conference

My anecdotal data thus far indicates that there are lots of North
Americans who cannot, for regulatory reasons, travel to conferences
outside the USA, regardless of the price.  This includes all manner of
county, municipal, state and federal workers, for whom even "out of
state", let alone "out of country" travel is looked at askance.

A surprising number of people were not allowed to even come to the
Victoria FOSS4G.

Similarly, I have heard that some folks in government in Canada are
finding it hard to get approvals for the 2008 event, even though they
have costed it out, and found it less than $1000 more expensive than
attending the San Diego ESRI event, even though the FOSS4G event is
half-way around the world.

Basically, the targeted demographic of "people with training budgets"
may be relatively (compared to you, or even I) price insensitive, but
they are quite location sensitive, and an event inside the borders of
the USA will provide an opportunity otherwise lacking.

> 2. Implicit change of Foundation conference policy

I'm unsure I understand your point here. What do you think is the
current policy, and what do you think it is being implicitly changed
to?

> 3. Impression of North American "cabal" bias in OSGeo strengthened.

I'm not sure that disallowing events in North America is a reasonable
response to what is, anyways, only a matter of perception and not
fact.  There is a wonderful "OSGeo Hacking" event going on in Italy
next month.  FOSSGIS runs in Germany (and in the exclusionary German
language) annually.  PgDay.it ran last year, including a geo track.
I, as a paid up member of the North American cabal, have been unable
to attend any of these.

Yours,

Paul

PS - There's some stuff below that bears addressing, but is not
directly related to this proposal, but I'm a shotgun respondent, so
forgive my deferring the responses to other envelopes.

> 1. Some of the attendees at the proposed "teach-in" would otherwise have
> attended the main FOSS4G. This event is aimed at those who have
> organisational "training" budgets and priced similarly to a
> proprietary training. To people in that situation, an extra few
> hundred dollars for plane travel will not make much difference.
>
> So a North-American workshop event *may* draw funding away from FOSS4G to an
> extent that is not properly compensated by lesser of '10% of profits or 10K'.
> 10K USD is the equivalent of two basic conference sponsorships, or one
> a dozen workshop attendees at a FOSS4G, which could easily be drawn away.
>
> 2. In the past, especially at the Board F2F last year, there has been
> discussion about changing the model for FOSS4G. Should it be viewed as
> profit-making and thus a significant alternative income stream for
> OSGeo (as opposed to sponsorships)? There has been a desire to keep
> the conference as cheap as possible in recognition of its history and
> its status as a "gathering of the tribes".
>
> A viable model used by FOSSGIS has been to charge for workshops and
> offer a free conference in the days following. FOSS4G is somewhat stuck
> in a "sour spot" where it is too expensive to be considered "grassroots",
> but too cheap to be used as profitable, while carrying the kinds of
> expectations about scale that involve several-100K deposits and
> professional conference management companies.
>
> Given the global economic uncertainty and increasing cost of travel
> that Paul identifies as a motivator for putting on a "supplementary"
> OSGeo event in North America in years when FOSS4G is not there; the
> idea of high-attendance, high-gloss conference to which FOSS4G has
> been heading looks less sustainable and desirable than it did.
>
> There'S not only the opportunity but the necessity to look again at
> OSGeo's conference policy and encourage broader discussion of it.
> Given the possibility outlined above of a "teach-in" withdrawing
> resources from FOSS4G. The paid-workshop-plus-loose-structured-free-event
> model is a good one going forward.
>
> This "training" could be seen as a good chance to pilot a better model
> for FOSS4G, including a way to allow OSGeo community organisers like
> Paul and Jeff to be paid for their time, and not lose so much
> member-sourced money to specialist conference companies who will in
> no way reinvest it in the common good. On the one hand this is
> risk-free pilot project for the Foundation, on the other it is handing
> the most successful model over to be cherrypicked by a commercial entity.
>
> 3. A workshop event being run as a commercial one-off in North America
> gives the inadvertent impression that OSGeo resources and activities
> are concentrated in North America and reinforced by a tightly-knit
> social network there. The "free benefit" of cross-marketing will be
> concentrated where a lot of marketing effort is already directed.
>
> The onus is on us as policymakers for the Foundation to counteract
> that impression. If a "teach-in" provides a very good fit for the
> Foundation's educational and outreach goals, as well as a means of
> financial autonomy, then OSGeo should be considering trying to
> replicate the success of the model worldwide in helping smaller
> regional conferences come together. This would IMHO be a more
> beneficial use of our Exec Director's time than sponsor schmoozing and
> sponsor relationship management.
>
> Anyway i would like to hear more non-North-American reactions
> especially on this last point and how to address it.
>
> cheers,
>
>
> jo
> --
>
>