[Board] OSGeo board, F2F Meeting in India

[Jeff McKenna]

Thanks for the response Chris.  I might change the word "hardship" to 
"not within your budget", but otherwise I agree with your opinions.  I 
guess it comes down to fundraising (and we've come full circle in our 
discussions again)...but still it can't hurt to throw our 
thoughts/beliefs out there (maybe mine come off too strong sometimes, I 
apologize).

Thanks for listening.

-jeff



Christopher Schmidt wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 05, 2010 at 08:57:15AM +0900, Jeff McKenna wrote:
>> Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo) wrote:
>> Hi Tyler,
>>
>> Thanks for summarizing.  I think we will miss a great opportunity to  
>> promote OSGeo in India (isn't this the main goal of the Foundation?); 
> 
> If the main goal of the foundation is to promote OSGeo in India,
> I wasn't aware of it.
> 
> Perhaps you mean:
>  "The main goal of the Foundation is to support OSGeo in developing
>   nations." I also don't agree with this.
> 
> Our homepage says:
> "Our goal is to encourage the use and collaborative development of
> community-led projects." 
> 
> I think this is more realistic.
> 
> Anything that costs OSGeo money -- like funding a trip to India for
> the board of directors -- would take funds away from other things
> that money can be spent on. If we imagine that OSGeo is to fund
> the travel of the Board to India for a F2F meeting, the costs are 
> pretty large. Even assuming a conservative estimate for travel from
> a hub, you're talking about flights being something like 
> $1500 per person. Adding in hotel for 1-2 nights is not free, but
> we'll assume that someone can put us up. 
> 
> So, with 9 directors, that's $13k; this is ignoring the fact that some
> of the directors may also be taking time off, or unable to do consulting
> work during that time, resulting in personal lost income. 
> 
> If we imagine that that money is spent instead on funding the OSGeo
> India conference, I think that the end result of giving that 
> $10000 to the OSGeo India group would be more beneficial to the efforts
> of OSGeo overall.
> 
> I don't want to condescend here, but unless you imagine each board 
> member supporting their own travel, even assuming that some majority
> of them could attend without personal sacrifice, just doesn't make
> sense outside of events that some number of the board members will
> already be attending... like FOSS4G.  
> 
>> I do have another idea:
>>
>> - each FOSS4G annual event must include a Board F2F, and this  
>> requirement should be added to the FOSS4G request for hosting, as the  
>> AGM is already included. Each Board member's travel expenses will be  
>> covered for each Board F2F meeting (meaning: travel to FOSS4G)
> 
>> To me this makes sense.
> 
> Yes; although I might change "will be covered" to "will be covered
> in case of hardship". Some people have employers who would be willing
> to cover a board member's travel -- as MetaCarta has for me in the past,
> for example. In a situation where a board member would be paying out of
> pocket, I think it makes sense to go ahead and support them with travel,
> and this includes the (common) situation of having a board member acting
> primarily as a consultant/contractor. But in a situation where an
> employer is willing to cover that cost, I think that it's reasonable to
> take advantage of it -- a donation to support OSGeo, sort of. :)
> 
> Any situation where a number of board members are likely to attend,
> I think it makes sense to encourage a full F2F board meeting where
> costs aren't prohibitive. (For example, it might make sense to
> travel to India if 3 or 4 board members *already* planned on attending,
> and were funded out of other organizations within India, for example.)
> This will likely always be true with FOSS4G. However, making the funds
> available for all of the board -- or even 75% of it -- to travel
> to a location where the other 25% will be is probably not reasonable. 
> 
> Regards,


-- 
Jeff McKenna
MapServer Consulting and Training Services
http://www.gatewaygeomatics.com/