[Board] FOSS4G rotation

Sat Apr 13 05:30:48 PDT 2013

Frank,
I agree that a compelling proposal should include meeting foss4g 
financial expectations.

For the record, the last board meeting discussed changing guidelines for 
foss4g budgets from expecting a $20K profit under conservative 
estimates, to a $50K profit. (This would typically result in a $100K+ 
profit under expected conditions).

David Bitner, pointed out that a $100K profit spread across 1000 
attendees equates to $100 extra per delegate, which is a good point, but 
should be tempered against the variability of FOSS4G attendees, and the 
high impact on profits this has. Looking back at an old foss4g budget, I 
extrapolated some profit figures:

Attendees: Profit
1000: $58K
900: $35K
800: $11K
700: -$11K
600: -$35K
500: -$58K

While I made some gross generalisations in my extrapolation, the take 
home message is that fixed costs of a large conference such as FOSS4G 
are very high, and consequently, a small percentage increase or decrease 
in attendance has high impact on profitability.
So if we want to ensure a worst case scenario of 500 delegates will 
break even, then we should expect to make a $110K profit for an expected 
attendance of 1000.

On 13/04/13 08:10, Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> Cameron,
>
> I feel this question ties into the expected revenue to some degree. 
>  I'm personally fine with your suggestion with the caveat that we 
> should expect a "compelling proposal" to meet our revenue generation 
> guidelines which is (IMHO) going to be hard to do if aim for $50K 
> revenue in the conservative case.
>
> I'm also fairly flexible on this who issue, but I *feel* like every 
> time we have a revenue discussion we come up with one set of 
> conclusions, but somehow we fail to actually apply those conclusion 
> when setting requirements for the conference.
>
> Best regards,
> Frank
>
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 2:24 PM, Cameron Shorter 
> <cameron.shorter at gmail.com <mailto:cameron.shorter at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     In the last board meeting, the question was raised about global
>     FOSS4G rotation.
>
>     we currently have a 3 way rotation policy: Europe 2013 / North
>     America 2014 / Rest of world 2015
>
>     It has been suggested that we should revisit this rotation policy,
>     and consider:
>
>     Europe / North America / Europe / North America
>
>     Reasons:
>     * Previous global FOSS4G events have attracted more people and
>     been more lucrative in Europe / North America
>     * Europe/North America could be argued to be less financially
>     risky. Our one cancelled FOSS4G was in China in 2012.
>     * FOSS4G (global and regional) events traditionally draw half
>     their attendance from the local region. Europe and North America
>     both have large populations with established OSGeo communities.
>
>     I'm in favour of continuing our current 3 way rotation, on the
>     proviso that there are proven OSGeo communities outside of
>     NA/Europe. By proven, I'd suggest that we would consider regions
>     which have already successfully staged a FOSS4G regional event (or
>     similar) and who can put together a compelling justification that
>     they can attract comparable attendees and sponsors to Europe/North
>     America.
>
>     Looking at: http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Live_GIS_History
>     I see that there have previously been regional FOSS4G events in:
>     Argentina
>     India
>     Korea
>     Malaysia
>     Japan
>
>     So for 2015, I'd suggest that our FOSS4G pre qualification should
>     invite responses from "rest of the world" and Europe, but we
>     should give a preference to "rest of world" assuming they can
>     provide a compelling proposal which is likely to attract similar
>     success to past European and North American conferences.
>
>     Generalising the rule. Our rotation policy should be:
>
>     * We give a strong preference to a region which hasn't had FOSS4G
>     for 2 years
>     * We next consider the region which had FOSS4G 2 years ago
>     * Only as a last resort would we consider a region which had
>     FOSS4G last year
>
>     Regions are considered as: Europe / North America / Other locations
>
>     -- 
>     Cameron Shorter
>     Geospatial Solutions Manager
>     Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050 <tel:%2B61%20%280%292%208570%205050>
>     Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254 <tel:%2B61%20%280%29419%20142%20254>
>
>     Think Globally, Fix Locally
>     Geospatial Solutions enhanced with Open Standards and Open Source
>     http://www.lisasoft.com
>
>     _______________________________________________
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>
>
>
>
> -- 
> ---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
> I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, 
> warmerdam at pobox.com <mailto:warmerdam at pobox.com>
> light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam 
> <http://pobox.com/%7Ewarmerdam>
> and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Software Developer

-- 
Cameron Shorter
Geospatial Solutions Manager
Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254

Think Globally, Fix Locally
Geospatial Solutions enhanced with Open Standards and Open Source
http://www.lisasoft.com

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