[Board] 2012 FOSS4G Decision

[Mark Lucas]

Hopefully this won't come off sounding abrupt, a lot of us are busy trying to carve out slices of time at the conference.

As a new board member I'm trying to get oriented and am being asked to weigh in on financial, structural, and conference decisions in real time. (or at least that is why way it feels).  Not having a clear understanding of our financial situation is the main impediment.  I hate to say it, but it feels like board is a little out of control.  I felt a little better after reading Arnulf's clarification on Beijing and I'm in complete agreement with Jo's response.  This perception is resulting in a lot of frustration outside the board - hobu, the ED, the foss4g selection committee are examples.

90% of all problems are communications.  So I hope I'm way off base on this...

My top priority would be the financial stability and growth of the organization.  We have a very talented full time ED that, in my mind, doesn't need to be micro-managed.  The board should set general policy and direction, but I'd like to see many of these decisions made by the ED.  The ED has a very personal interest in the financial stability and growth of the organization.  Management by committee never works very well.  We all need to pull our weight in helping him achieve those goals.

Our main source of revenue is successful conferences.  Lets do more.  I like the idea of annual regional conferences in North America, Europe, and Asia as the international conference walks around.  Since this is the highest probability for increasing revenue, it doesn't hurt my head to invest in it.  Jeff has certainly demonstrated proficiency in organizing successful events.  The conference committee/process has recommended Beijing.  We should support that and do what we can to make it financially successful.  We should also plan on a North American conference.  Multiple regional conferences will spread our risk and should lead to financial stability and growth.  As we can afford things, we should augment the ED position with part -> full time support focused on managing and organizing the conferences.

It is all about financial bandwidth and managing risk.  It appears that Denver is a success, can anyone summarize/update our projections for the next year.  I think we all want to support a wide range of code sprints and activities.  

Next, we need to look at extending our sponsor base.  I know we have discussed the pros and cons of membership dues in the past as well.

Ironically, a quote that stuck with me at the conference:
 "You can't make a difference if you can't make a living" - esri

We have knocked the ball out of the park in terms of the development community.  We have no serious competition.  I believe we have opportunities to get some serious relationships with government and commercial entities.  We have matured to the point where I think we need to place more emphasis on business models - for the community and for ourselves.

Anyway, my thoughts.  We have a lot of potential, we just need to carry through…

Hope nobody takes any of this personally, I really like and respect everyone on the board...

Mark



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