[Board] Support

[Frank Warmerdam]

Paul Ramsey wrote:
> On Wed, May 28, 2008 at 12:44 AM, Markus Neteler <neteler at osgeo.org> wrote:
> 
>>> Perhaps the place of a charitable Foundation is to help create interest
>>> and to support initiative where it is lacking, wherever in the world that is?
>> +1 +1
> 
> It's all in what you think the meaning of the word "support" is.
> OSGeo can't use it's money to create interest from nothing, there has
> to be enough interest there in the first place that the money is
> actually useful.
> 
> What concrete actions would manifest OSGeo "support" for folks in Europe?

Folks,

I'm of the opinion that the (western?) European FOSS4G community has the
experience, enthusiasm and money to pull off the teachin on it's own
without OSGeo financial support.  It should be sufficient (I hope) to
provide the same level of promotional support suggested for the US
teach-in.

If we, as a board were wanting to finance some advocacy with money, I'd
think it might take the form of a subsidized variation on the teach-in
in places with less existing capacity - perhaps in South America,
Asia and Africa.  And that it might take more the approach of supporting
local folks to teach the workshops prepared for the "for profit" teach-in's
in NA/EU with only a modest number of outside folks coming in to help
with the event.

The aim for such subsidized events might be to:
  o Provide up-front funding for a facility (hopefully we could gets something
    reasonable at a university)
  o Provide up-front funding for a few outside presenters.
  o Subsidize some students (perhaps selected by local chapter activists?)

I think even when we are providing some financial support we would still
want:
  o Some attendies to be paying a reasonable fee (perhaps quite a bit less
    than the "commercial" teach-in's) that would subsidize most of the
    event cost, including financial support (per the teach-in model but at
    a lower level) for local organizers.
  o A savvy and active local chapter to lead the organizational effort.

Having said all that, I'd prefer to see the "teach-in" prove itself as
proposed before trying to replicate it far and wide in subsidized forms.
I should add I'm assuming that some of the workshop material from the
commercial teach-in's would be available for reuse - this is by no means
a certainty.

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