[Board] Thoughts on FOSS4G

[Peter Batty]

Hi Daniel, thanks for the feedback. Like I said I'm certainly open on the
Sol Katz award, just wanted to throw out some other options for people to
think about.

Cheers,
    Peter.

On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 10:25 AM, Daniel Morissette <
dmorissette at mapgears.com> wrote:

> Hi Peter,
>
> Thank you for sending this. I agree with everything you wrote, and I
> really like where you are going with your draft announcement ... except for
> one thing:
>
> I am of the opinion that we should still have the Sol Katz, AGM, and a
> Board F2F meeting somewhere... they must happen IMHO. If attaching them to
> an existing event in Asia is not practical then let's find an event in
> Europe or America where the board can more easily get to.
>
> I don't think doing this would reduce the value of the Sol Katz in any
> way. In 2008, Paul Ramsey could not make it to Cape Town, so he recorded
> and sent an acceptance speech that was presented in front of the people
> present in Cape Town [1]. It's all virtual these days... a recorded video
> could give even more exposure to the recipient and the award than a
> physical presence at FOSS4G. (Except that you don't get the face to face
> congratulations from your peers I guess)
>
> My 0.02$
>
> See you all on IRC in a few minutes.
>
> Daniel
>
> [1] http://blog.cleverelephant.ca/**2008/10/sol-katz-award.html<http://blog.cleverelephant.ca/2008/10/sol-katz-award.html>
>
>
> On 12-07-12 10:35 AM, Peter Batty wrote:
>
>> 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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>>
>
> --
> Daniel Morissette
> http://www.mapgears.com/
> Provider of Professional MapServer Support since 2000
>
>
>
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