[Board] [OSGeo-Conf] FOSS4G rotation

[Cameron Shorter]

Barend,
Let me address your points:


On 15/04/13 19:34, b.j.kobben at utwente.nl wrote:
> Hia ll,
>
> I am not a board member nor a conference committee member, but I feel an
> urgent need to give my opinion here.
>
> I grow uncomfortable by some of the trends that seem to "logically follow"
> (note the quotes, and yes I am exaggerating on purpose) from this
> discussion:
> 1)- FOSS4G events are there to make money
Conferences such as FOSS4G are financially very risky events. They 
require significant investment up front to secure a large venue, and can 
fail for a wide variety of reasons, many out of control of the 
organisors. I chaired FOSS4G 2009 in Sydney in the year of the Global 
Financial Crisis, and before the conference I warned the board that we 
were expecting to make a $70K+ loss due to reduced registrations. (In 
the end, we did make a minor profit, due to reducing variable costs, and 
last minute registrations, and a lot of hard work from the committee 
lobbying and marketing).

It is also worth noting, that a relatively small increase in attendance, 
leads to a substantial gain in profit. (See figures below).

Consequently, future conferences should aim to make money, because 
without such an expectation, we are likely to sometimes loose money, and 
that is something we wish to avoid.
> 2)- non NA/Europe events don't make (enough) money
This is actually the wrong question/point.
It is less about making money than attracting the international foss4g 
audience.
The key value of the Global FOSS4G is as the meeting place of all the 
key OSGeo figures from around the world. Most FOSS4G attendees can only 
attend one international event per year, and need to decide which event 
to attend.

One of the downfalls of FOSS4G Beijing was that people were selecting to 
attend FOSS4G-NA instead, as FOSS4G-NA was looking to be more 
successful, and was looking to be attracting more people than 
FOSS4G-Beijing.

Hence, our lesson in selecting FOSS4G global venues is to select a venue 
which is going to attract a large number of attendees. Both EU and US 
have proven to be such regions. In future, I'd suggest that we should 
select regions which have proven they can attract non-trivial audiences 
to regional FOSS4G events. (I agree that South America is a prime 
candidate).


> 3)- non NA/Europe events get badly organized (see Beijng)

I know that non-EU/US conferences are well organised - as mentioned, I 
was part of the FOSS4G-Sydney team, which raised the bar for foss4g 
conferences in a number of areas. (Eg: we launched the OSGeo-Live DVD at 
that event.)
 From all accounts, FOSS4G 2008 in Johannesburg was also a success.

With regards to analysis of the Beijing FOSS4G, I suggest reading:
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G_2012_Lessons_Learned
There were many lessons that were learned.

>
> Proposition 1 already makes me feel itchy. How can you 'charge' FOSS4G
> main event organizers with being a cash cow ("expecting a $50K profit") if
> at the same time encouraging (allowing?) other events to be organised that
> almost certainly will cannabilise the main event (Foss4G-NA, FOSS4g CEE)
> on which events you put no obligation to make money? I think we need a
> two-year cycle: one year the main conference and other years regional ones
> (i.e. ones actively supported by OSGEO "central", what the regional
> chapters do on their own is their own responsibility).
>
> Proposition 2 is touching a nerve because I work at an institute that is
> about capacity building for lesser developed countries. I think part of
> OSGEO is promoting the use of FOSS, and bringing knowledge and experience
> and enthousiasm about that to the places in the world that would profit
> most from it is a good cause that is worth doing even if it brings you
> less or no money. By all means subsidize the LDC meetings with profits
> from the Europe/NA ones. Call me a specialist, but I prefer some
> solidarity in this...
>
> Proposition 3 is plain not true. The South Africa FOSS4G was excellent in
> my opinion, the Beijng one failed because of insufficient control
> mechanisms (either in place or just not followed up on) to check on a
> local organisation that chooses to do its own thing completely independent
> of 'OSGEO central'. Could have happened with self-centered stubborn Dutch
> organizers just as well, and certainly at least part of the blame should
> be on the 'OSGEO central' shoulders...
>
> Yours truly,
>
> --
> Barend Köbben
> Senior Lecturer, ITC - University of Twente,
> Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation
> PO Box 217, 7500AE Enschede (The Netherlands)
>
>
>
>
> On 13-04-13 14:30, "Cameron Shorter" <cameron.shorter at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> 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> 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
>> <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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-- 
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