[Board] FOSS4G 2012 Timeline

[Gao Ang]

Board,

Thank you all very much for your care and advices about FOSS4G 2012.
The preparation is going smoothly here. After contacting all LoC
members, I represent them to give the summaries about our progress
here.

The venue of FOSS4G 2012 is the Beijing Conference Center. The
conference date is arranged as follows.
9th, Sept. (afternoon) - desk registry (one day after openstreetmap
meeting closing in Tokyo)
10th–11th Sept – Workshops
12th–15th Sept – Tutorial/Technical/Academy Section
16th, Sept – Code Sprint

The milestone is proposed as follows. It is about one month late if
comparing with 2011 events. But it can be recovered very soon in
Chinese way.
1) Web-site release 29th Feb 2012 (can be early, after spring festival)
2) Announcement of Chinese Sponsors 1st March 2012
3) Release of Prospectus for Sponsors 15th March 2012
4) Early Bird Registration Start 15th March 2012 to 15 June 2012
3) Call for Abstracts: Start 31 March 2012 - Close 30th April 2012
4) Call for Workshop and tutorials 31 March 2012 - Close 30th April 2012
5) Voting for Technical Session Abstract 1 May 2012 - 15th May 2012
6) Abstract acceptance 31 May 2012
7) Workshop acceptance 31 May 2012
8) Call for Full papers for Academic Session 31 May 2012 with deadline
1st July 2012
9) Announcement of Keynote Speakers 1st July 2012
9) Release Conference Program 10th July 2012
10) Issue for support letters for Visa commence 10th July 2012 onwards.
      Visa will be issued in 4 working days at Chinese Embassy or Consulate
       in resident countries.

Now we are preparing the brochure so that we can contact foreign
sponsors with it. For local sponsors, we have contacted Chinese
Academy of Sciences, Supmap GIS and so on. Prof. Song who is now in
Japan, had a full discussion with Prof. Raghvan, collecting a lot of
experiences about past events. We also welcome you for your valuable
suggestions. ("Prof. Song" <song.osgeo at gmail.com>, "Xiong Jie"
<xiongjie666 at gmail.com> and I <tomgaoang at gmail.com> will follow the
mail lists and response to the suggestions.)

Best wishes,
Gao