[Board] On the creation of permanent OSGeo/FOSS4G CRM

[Jeff McKenna]

Hi Darrell,

For many years as the OSGeo Conference Committee chair I chased after
past FOSS4G chairs to include their sponsorship names and amounts (if
you look in the appendix of your hosting RFP document you can still see
all of them there, from past events back to 2004).  Some chairs included
organization names and amounts; likely this is the best we can do now
for "consistency".

So yes I agree fully that we need to be saving these sponsor contacts in
some sort of CRM (I personally feel that spending money on this each
month for an externally supported system is smart).

I believe a few years back Tyler started on this (CRM), maybe gave
access to Arnulf...but that is all I know.  It just comes down to
someone dedicated to managing this.

-jeff



On 2014-03-27, 9:50 PM, Darrell Fuhriman wrote:
> 
> One of things that has become apparent in going through the process of
> getting sponsorships for FOSS4G is that the current system is rather
> unwieldy. In fact, the use of the word “system” implies a type of order
> which does not exist.
> 
> There are no designated contacts at each company, no consistent tracking
> of past sponsorships or expressions of interest, no tracking of
> non-functioning e-mails, or people who have left a company.
> 
> In short, it’s a complete fucking disaster.
> 
> This is a problem because:
> 
> 1) FOSS4G is dependent on sponsorships to finish in the black
> 2) OSGeo is dependent on FOSS4G events (not just the big annual
> conference) for a large portion of its income
> 3) We should be making it easy, not hard, to keep FOSS4G/OSGeo solvent.
> 
> We have individuals who have expressed an interest in getting all of the
> past and current data into a CRM so we can more easily track this in the
> future. However, unless there is a future for such a system, it’s
> probably not worth the non-trivial amount of effort it would take.
> 
> Hence, I propose:
> 
> The 2014 LOC will work to configure an instance of SugarCRM, including
> entering the data we have collected on current and past sponsorships.
> 
> After the conclusion of FOSS4G 2014, OSGeo would agree to:
> 
> 1) Move the SugarCRM instance to be hosted and maintained by OSGeo
> 2) Strongly encourage (mandate?) its use by future OSGeo affiliated
> conferences
> 3) Give access to other geospatial related events as appropriate
> 
> I realize there is some reluctance to "give orders" to the people who
> have volunteered to do these events. However in the long run having a
> central CRM will /reduce/ the amount of work required by future LOCs,
> and by past ones who get requests to dig out contact information from
> events that occurred years ago.
> 
> The use of a CRM could also be expanded to track contact information for
> all attendees including which events they’ve attended, so they can be
> contacted about future relevant events – another case where there is no
> coordination or sanity to any of the extant data.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> Darrell
> 
>