[Board] Thoughts on FOSS4G

[Peter Batty]

Hi all,

I am aiming to attend the board meeting today but have various other
commitments that I'm trying to juggle. In case I don't make it, and just to
get the ball rolling, here are a few thoughts on follow ups from the FOSS4G
cancellation.

I think we should put out some sort of communication from the board about
this - we can decide the exact forums, at least something to OSGeo lists
and on the OSGeo web site, probably get it to some media outlets too.
Unless someone else wants to volunteer, I'd be happy to draft something
based on discussion at today's meeting and any input anyone else sends, and
send that round for review.

A few points I would probably include something along the following lines:

We are disappointed but not surprised that FOSS4G Beijing has been
cancelled. We have known for some time, as has anyone who follows the OSGeo
conference or board public mailing lists, that the local committee was
facing various challenges. But we wanted to give them the maximum chance to
try to pull together an event.

FOSS4G has been successful being a truly global conference, taking a major
event around the world with most of the work done by local volunteers.
We've had great success with this approach, with great events in Sydney,
Cape Town, etc. But this approach has its risks too, and we'll review our
strategy in the light of what happened this year to see what we can do to
mitigate those risks. (I can see various ways of approaching this section,
definitely open to suggestions).

But FOSS4G remains strong. The 2011 event in Denver was the largest yet,
with 900 people from 42 countries and great reviews. And plans for 2013 in
Nottingham are already very advanced, we have a very strong team organizing
that and are looking forward to a great event there.

FOSS4G has also evolved into multiple regional events in addition to the
global one. We have had multiple successful FOSS4G events already this year
with NA and CEE, and Japan to come (include some info on number of
attendees etc).

A few thoughts that are probably outside this external communication:

I think we should review our future strategy for FOSS4G in terms of
location rotation, global versus local, how it is organized, etc. But I
don't think there's a huge rush on this. We have a solid plan for the 2013
event, we need to get something worked out by first part of next year
before we start the selection process for 2014 (if we decide that we need
any changes - we may decide not). I think we should focus first on short
term communication and other immediate issues.

Second, there have been questions on what to do about the Sol Katz award,
and suggestions of presenting it at some other event. I'd like to suggest
that we consider NOT doing this as it risks diluting the award to me. It's
a great tradition to recognize leaders in our community. However I think an
important part of that is being recognized at a major meeting of the
community. If we present it at some other event where there isn't a large
attendance from the global open source community we risk losing that. And
we put pressure on the winner to make a trip potentially to the other side
of the world for an event that they may not have gone to otherwise.

So I'd suggestion we consider deferring the award to Nottingham in 2013.
There could be a few variants on this. We could give the committee the
option of making two awards at that event if they wanted to (or just one).
We could also announce an award winner this year, but make the presentation
next year. Or we could just skip an award altogether this year and resume
next year. I don't have super strong opinions on this, but just wanted to
throw out this option for discussion.

Hope to talk with you all later, otherwise catch up via email afterwards.

Cheers,
    Peter.
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