[Board] Re: F2F meeting

[Arnulf Christl (OSGeo)]

Howard,
thanks for making a clear statement to a constraint that we have. But I am
inclined to say that we should then remove that constraint instead of not
meeting. I also want to have my expenses paid for and I think this is
something that OSGeo must be able to do in the future if it wants to
continue to prosper and grow. Otherwise we can make it a requirement that
future Directors must be capable and willing to afford a meeting on their
own expense.

I have started several attempts at getting together at least a list of
potential sponsors and to then nudge some board members into actually
contacting them and to report of their success but so far to no avail.

Does anybody have a better suggestion at how to solve this problem? My
guess is that nothing much will happen if we just sit around and wait.
Another example: "Somebody" ought to get into contact with Autodesk and
make sure that they stay at the 50k level. They would be paying 150k every
year for their CollabNet environment if we would not have prepared a cosy
nest for them. Or did I miss something along the way? Its just a deal and
someone will have to dicker.

It's just that I am not going to do it all on my own because I simply
cannot, I am as busy as most of us. And probably I am not even very good
at it (too blunt, impatient, etc... :-)

Best regards,
Arnulf.


On Fri, November 6, 2009 13:51, Howard Butler wrote:
>

> On Nov 5, 2009, at 7:09 PM, Arnulf Christl (OSGeo) wrote:
>
>
>> I really mean to get all of us meet in one place
>> for two days.
>
> I don't see how this is remotely possible given our budgetary
> constraints.  There's no way I can afford footing a F2F board meeting out
> of pocket right now, and OSGeo has never been in a position of being able
> to support board member's travel to F2F meetings.
>
> We should see if we can procure reliable low-cost tele/video
> conferencing before putting the squeeze on members to spend a day of travel
> on each side of a two day F2F.  Our meeting situation (IRC + free skype)
> is awful.
>
> Howard
>
>


-- 
Arnulf Christl
President OSGeo
http://www.osgeo.org