[Board] OSGeo Board Priorities
Cameron Shorter
cameron.shorter at gmail.com
Sun Mar 3 15:44:42 PST 2013
Aproductive virtual meeting of the OSGeo Board
<http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Board_Meeting_2013-02-26>resulted in general
consensus over OSGeo's priorities, which in turn should help the OSGeo
Board and OSGeo committees when guiding OSGeo into the future.
These principles are:
* OSGeo should act as a low capital, volunteer focused organisation.
* OSGeo should focus support on OSGeo communities and initiatives
which support themselves.
Current priority areas include:
* Global, regional and local FOSS4G related events, or events which
include a FOSS4G stream.
* Marketing OSGeo, which is currently focused aroundOSGeo-Live
<http://live.osgeo.org/>.
* Education, which is currently focused around the network ofOpen
Source Geospatial Research and Education Laboratories
<http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Edu_current_initiatives>.
* Local Chapters, as outreach initiatives are typically driven at the
local level.
So lets expand on these:
OSGeo as a low capital, volunteer focused organisation
Should OSGeo act as a high capital or low capital organisation? I.e.,
should OSGeo dedicate energy to collecting sponsorship and then passing
out these funds to worthy OSGeo causes.
While initially it seems attractive to have OSGeo woe sponsors, because
we would all love to have more money to throw at worthy OSGeo goals, the
reality is that chasing money is hard work. And someone who can chase
OSGeo sponsorship is likely conflicted with chasing sponsorship for
their particular workplace. So in practice, to be effective in chasing
sponsorship, OSGeo will probably need to hire someone specifically for
the role. OSGeo would then need to raise at least enough to cover wages,
and then quite a bit more if the sponsorship path is to create extra value.
This high capital path is how the Eclipse foundation is set up, and how
LocationTech propose to organise themselves. It is the path that OSGeo
started following when founded under the umbrella of Autodesk.
However, over the last seven years, OSGeo has slowly evolved toward a
low capital volunteer focused organisation. Our overheads are very low,
which means we waste very little of our volunteer labour and capital on
the time consuming task of chasing and managing money. Consequently, any
money we do receive (from conference windfalls or sponsorship) goes a
long way - as it doesn't get eaten up by high overheads. As discussed
and agreed by the board, this low capital path is something that is
working very well for us, and is the path we should continue to follow.
Support initiatives which support themselves
With the thousands of great initiatives and opportunities that OSGeo
could get involved in, and limited budget, how should OSGeo set funding
priorities? Acknowledging that our volunteer community is blessed with
many talented individuals, our most effective way to tap into community
potential is to welcome individuals to "help scratch their itch".
Extending on this, funding priorities should follow the*actions*of
already successful communities. (Note the difference between "talk" and
"action"). If a task or project is important enough, it will attract
volunteers and/or sponsors to make it happen. In practice, this will
usually equate to providing co-contributions rather than outright funding.
OSGeo's focus should be on initiatives which are of value to all or most
OSGeo projects, and to get best value for our limited budget, OSGeo
should target initiatives which have high value with minimal investment.
With that in mind our priorities should be:
* Cover the costs of running OSGeo: Bank fees, insurance,
infrastructure, hosting etc.
* Support marketing and out reach activities, with a primary focus on
our FOSS4G global conference, followed by regional and then local
FOSS4G or related events.
* Educational type activities are a high priority, but likely will be
a minimal cost activity from OSGeo's perspective.
* Other initiatives which fit our priorities, as suggested by membership.
Initiatives which probably wouldn't quality:
* Sponsoring core development of a particular project. (Too expensive,
and only supports one project)
* OSGeo speaker travel expenses, or booth registration costs at a
conference. (If conferences/local community feel this is important,
they will either: 1. pay for the keynote, 2. make use of local
talent, 3. waive fees for our non-profit, 4. find a local sponsor)
Conferences and related events
Conferences are financially risky events. They need to be planned well
in advance, and you are never sure how many people will turn up, or
whether some global event will have a substantial impact on
registrations. Consequently, conferences such as FOSS4G require
financial guarantees up front in order to secure a venue. To support and
enable these conferences, OSGeo will endevour to retain sufficient
capital to offer such guarantees for any FOSS4G event requesting it. If
OSGeo's support is requested, then OSGeo would expect these events to
budget for a modest profit under conservative estimates, and for OSGeo
to retain profits from such events. To date, such profits, while
relatively modest, have been OSGeo's primary income source.
Other spatial conferences regularly request an OSGeo involvement, such
as providingpresenters <http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OSGeo_Advocate>,
workshops,OSGeo-Live DVDs for distribution
<http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Live_GIS_Disc#Including_OSGeo-Live_at_your_event>,
orproviding a booth <http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Exhibition_Pack>. OSGeo
facilitates such requests to the level we can achieve with interested
volunteers, but typically expects the conference or sponsors to cover
expenses.
OSGeo has limited budget set aside for code sprints, which are seen as a
valuable forum for given directly back to development teams. OSGeo will
typically expect co-contributions from interested sponsors, and would
prefer to support code sprints which are of benefit to multiple projects
and communities.
Education
OSGeo is very supportive of educational initiatives which is helping the
spread of OSGeo to students across the globe. This is currently focused
around the growing network ofOpen Source Geospatial Research and
Education Laboratories
<http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Edu_current_initiatives>within Universities
around the world.
This educational initiative is currently progressing well without
requiring OSGeo's financial support.
Packaging and Marketing
OSGeo's marketing effort has primarily been focused around the packaging
and documentation efforts ofOSGeo-Live <http://live.osgeo.org/>, and to
a lesser extend,osgeo4w <http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo4w/>. In 2012,
OSGeo-Live was used at45 events
<http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Live_GIS_History>without OSGeo's financial
support. It has been entirely driven by volunteer labour, by 140
OSGeo-Live volunteers, and printing costs have been covered by local
events or sponsors.
In the last couple of years, OSGeo has covered local chapter expenses
required to purchasenon-consumable items for conference booths
<http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Exhibition_Pack>(such as a retractable banner).
In moving forward, OSGeo hope to extend marketing reach by providing
co-contributions toward printing costs of consumable items at
conferences, such as toward OSGeo-Live DVDs.
Local Chapters
Much of OSGeo's marketing initiates are applied at the local level. In
many cases, this is best supported through as little as an email list
and wiki page. OSGeo also supports local chapters by offering to pay for
anExhibition starter pack
<http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Exhibition_Pack>for local chapters. Local
chapters are also usually the coordinators of conferences and related
events, as mentioned above.
Sponsorship
OSGeo will continue to welcome sponsorship. Due to OSGeo's low capital
model, we are able to make sponsor's contribution provide substantial
benefit to the greater OSGeo community. In return, we promote sponsors'
logos on our website and through our OSGeo-Live marketing pipeline
(which was used at 45 geospatial events around the world in 2012).
However, OSGeo is doesn't plan to either task volunteers with
specifically chasing sponsors, or hire someone to chase sponsorship on
OSGeo's behalf.
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