[Board] Teach-in 2009

[Howard Butler]

On May 27, 2008, at 11:03 AM, Markus Neteler wrote:

> On Mon, May 26, 2008 at 10:43 PM,  <jo at frot.org> wrote:
> ...
>> 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.
>
> As a non-North-American I can foresee harsh reactions if this isn't
> dealt with well politically. I am fighting the battle here for quite  
> some
> time to convince people that OSGeo != North-America.

As measured by our conference geographies in the past and future  
conferences (NA, NA, NA, EU, NA, Africa, Australia), I think we're  
doing pretty well on the geographic diversity front, especially  
considering the fact that in my opinion, the geographic diversity of  
project contributors, funding, project software users, and OSGeo  
charter members don't necessarily map to that distribution.  The  
diversity we should be striving for is language (tongue, not software)  
diversity, not geographic diversity.

I think something like the Teach-in will totally cannibalize workshops  
for FOSS4G.  Why would I, as a small independent, invest in developing  
curriculum for FOSS4G where I have to pay to get there, pay to stay  
there, and pay to walk in the door, when I can market the same thing  
(assuming I were to make the cut) at the Teach-in, get paid (though  
not extravagantly) for my time, get paid to stay there, and get paid  
to get there?  I totally agree there's a market for open source gis  
training, and people are probably willing to pay to get it.  It's just  
that the workshops are *the* draw for a lot of folks for FOSS4G, and  
the incentives for giving a workshop at FOSS4G are somewhat weak right  
now, and with the Teach-in event, things will be disincentivized even  
further.

The Teach-in will have the ability to make our educational product  
much more even in terms of quality with respect to the FOSS4G  
workshops, but I think it will be at the expense of the FOSS4G  
workshop product -- *the* draw for many folks to FOSS4G.

Howard