[Board] [OSGeo-Conf] FOSS4G rotation

Sat Apr 20 03:41:24 PDT 2013

Although I like the idea of having a different  regional conference promoted to the "main" one each year, this would imply that regional one changes in that year from local-language to english-language. This would diminish the attractiveness for "locals" in some cases (specifically Japan and South America)...

Barend

on Friday, April 19, 2013 23:00, Cameron Shorter [cameron.shorter at gmail.com] wrote:

>From my assessment:

We know from FOSS4G metrics that:
* There are ~ 200 to 300 people who will travel to a global foss4g event, anywhere in the world.
* However, the majority of foss4g delegates are local or regional, in the case of North America, in the order of 500+, and these 500 won't travel to Europe, or Australia, or ... to see FOSS4G. Metrics are similar for the rest of the world.
* There is a proven demand for annual regional FOSS4G events. A global FOSS4G event would reach 1/3 or less of potential FOSS4G attendees which multiple regional conferences could reach.
* So if our primary goal is outreach to as many people as possible, then we are best served by multiple regional FOSS4G events.
* The price we pay for this increased OSGeo market, is increased marketing costs (in that vendors and delegates need to consider travelling to multiple events).
* The Open Source business model favours local businesses who can provide local, personalised services. As such, I think that it is in the interests of most OSGeo vendors to focus on regional events, where they can reach more targeted customers.
* And for the 300 odd people wishing to par-take in the "annual gathering of the tribes", we will delegate one of the regional conferences to be the global foss4g conference for the year.

Hence, my vote is that we continue to have regional conferences every year, with one of these regional conferences being given the extra honour of being called the global conference.

On 19/04/2013 12:54 PM, Daniel Kastl wrote:

On Fri, Apr 19, 2013 at 3:01 AM, Steven Feldman <shfeldman at gmail.com<mailto:shfeldman at gmail.com>> wrote:
When we bid we were concerned about regional events impacting attendance at the big one inn Nottingham this year.

this year we have a NA and  CEE event as well as FOSS4G. Everyone has reassured us that they have little or no impact, I am not so confident in a time of economic pressure but only time will tell.

It is difficult to be precise about cannibalisation by regional events unless we survey the delegates at these two regional events and ask them whether they plan to also attend Nottingham and if not whether they would have considered Nottingham if there had not been a regional event. Is that worth doing?

Regarding regional events I would make a difference between events that are mainly in English language or some other language.
For example the German FOSSGIS or the Japanese FOSS4G wouldn't really attract an audience, that doesn't speak German or Japanese. Same for regional events in Spanish or French. These local events are important, because lot of people prefer to hear (or give) presentations in their native language.
A big regional event such as FOSS4G NA though might have an impact though.

Daniel

On 17 Apr 2013, at 00:06, Cameron Shorter <cameron.shorter at gmail.com<mailto:cameron.shorter at gmail.com>> wrote:

I'd like to hear thoughts from people who organise FOSS4G regional events about the two year global / regional / global rotation.

In particular, would large regional conferences such as FOSS4G-NA or FOSS4G-EU or FOSS4G-CEE be interested in only holding events every second year?

On 16/04/2013 9:46 PM, Bart van den Eijnden wrote:
I think Barend's suggestion of a two year scheme (regional in year X, global in year Y) deserves some more discussion / attention.

Personally I can see the benefits of this scheme (no big competition from large regional conferences in the global year).

Also, does OsGeo currently get money out of the big regional conferences (such as FOSS4G-CEE and FOSS4G-NA)?

Best regards,
Bart

--
Bart van den Eijnden
OSGIS - http://osgis.nl<http://osgis.nl/>

On Apr 15, 2013, at 11:34 AM, b.j.kobben at utwente.nl<mailto: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
2)- non NA/Europe events don't make (enough) money
3)- non NA/Europe events get badly organized (see Beijng)

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<mailto: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<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
<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:
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Think Globally, Fix Locally
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http://www.lisasoft.com<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> <mailto:warmerdam at pobox.com><mailto:warmerdam at pobox.com>
light and sound - activate the windows |
http://pobox.com/~warmerdam<http://pobox.com/%7Ewarmerdam> <http://pobox.com/%7Ewarmerdam><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<tel:%2B61%20%280%292%208570%205050>
Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254<tel:%2B61%20%280%29419%20142%20254>

Think Globally, Fix Locally
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http://www.lisasoft.com<http://www.lisasoft.com/>

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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>

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--
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Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254

Think Globally, Fix Locally
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