[Board] Teach-in 2009

[Arnulf Christl]

Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo) wrote:
> On 27-May-08, at 9:03 AM, Markus Neteler wrote:
> 
>> A suggestion: Clone the idea immediately and offer the same thing
>> on 1-2 other continents, too.
> 
> Wouldn't it make more sense to try this one first and then, if workable 
> and with moral support from OSGeo, someone can take it elsewhere?  Just 
> seeing a proposal like this might be enough to encourage others 
> elsewhere too.

Now you get me going. (Dammit. I got work to do!)

Encourage things to happen elsewhere? Haha. Where do you have local conferences? Everywhere - except in NA. Your problem. Solve it. You get all the help you need but not by using the OSGeo brand on your event. Why not make it a full blooded commercial event? Rid the community. You don't need the community sanction when you do money. They will complain - no matter how well intended your reasoning is. And if you are friendly then you can nonetheless promote OSGeo (as we do all the time without ever getting back anything) and use OSGeo's outreach (announcement, calendar, SPD, Wiki, maybe even website - got to discuss that) to enhance visibility of your high level money-making event. 

I get the creeps when I hear that YOU want to tell the REST of the world how to do an OSGeo teach-in so that they carry it elsewhere. Who the hmmm do you think you are? This is exactly what makes non-NA people react superbly negative (knee jerking and all). 

You and the REST of the world. 

You (small, tiny, just a few overfed nerds) - you are an appendix, nobody needs an appendix. 
REST of the World (large, really big, many many form all walks of life) that is the body. 

Ahrgl! 

Sorysorrysorry...

This is funny, I am having a private Chat with Jeroen right now. He just asked me how we would deal with a training without Paul Ramsey. Wait a second. How is Paul Ramsey? Nobody around here would go to a training because it says Paul Ramsey on top - and neither because it says OSGeo. The other thing is that Paul would need to live 600 years to teach all people who want to learn about PostGIS in this year. Can't you see the relation? The world is way way way bigger than you think. We are still so tiny in our thinking - think big. How many MapServer instances are required to map the world as it is now. In how many languages? Say 10.000 in 200 languages. Now comes the riddle's solution: Its name is Globalization and most people don't understand a bit of it. 

How many people do you need to develop MapServer? 20, maybe 30. Lets say a hundred so that we get good docs. 

But how many people do you need to operate those 10.000 MapServer instances? Each of them runs a PostGIS and an OpenLayers and a GeoServer and and operating system and has people who need to be taught. Who is going to teach those people? As I said - if the guru crack developer hacker giants of OSGeo are going to do that - they will need to be around for quite some time. 

Wrapping up: 
* Be humble. You are not the center of the world.
* Think big: The world is bigger than what you can see when you look outside the window. 
* OSGeo is trying to help the world to communicate geographically (hold on - that was the OGC'S tag line). The important term here is "world". Not .us (and its province .ca Hehe)

Why did I confuse the tag lines? Because we have the same sentiment crawling through OGC right this very moment. You wouldn't imagine it but this kind of trouble is identical with NA participants both within OGC and OSGeo. There is no difference, both simply don't get it. 

Oh, we are public now. So what. 

/me turns off the screen and goes for lunch - mentally exhausted.