[Board] Polling charter members

[Darrell Fuhriman]

I also agree with Steven and Michael.

I have no problem with a model where OSGeo gets funds from the main conference (which I think we could actually expand if we abandon the current model) and then spends some of them to help with smaller conferences. 

What we lack is a clear vision for what we’re trying to do with the conferences.

I imagine a model like this, which I shared with some at the conference:

International Conference: large sponsorship, kind of expensive, many people (1000+), significant surpluses
Larger Regional Conferences: medium sponsorship, cheaper, fewer people (~500), expected to be in the black and return surpluses
Medium Regional Conferences: some sponsorship, cheap, small attendance (200-500), not necessarily expected to be profitable
Small Local Conferences: little to no sponsorship, free or very cheap admission, attendance of <200, not expected to return profits

Examples:

LRC: FOSS4G-NA, FOSS4G-E
MRC: FOSS4G-Korea, FOSS4G-Argentina
SLC: No examples, but imagine FOSS4G-East Africa, FOSS4G-Jakarta

As it is now, we’ve relied on active volunteers to make a conference. I want to see OSGeo trying to break into new regions, spread the word, and maybe inspire some future volunteers. I’d love to see OSGeo subsidizing FOSS4G-East Africa — maybe pay to send some “big names” to help generate interest. At the smaller conferences, I’d heavily emphasize inexpensive workshops, and if OSGeo was running enough of them, you could generate common educational materials to share between them, and you’d be doing the workshops often enough that they’d be easy to keep current. Cheap workshops can help subsidize the regular conference attendance.

Lest it sound like I’m advocating that OSGeo become primarily a conference organizer, that’s not my intention at all. I think the emphasis should be on the workshops and other education resources. At larger conferences code sprints are good to add. These are all things that expand and strengthen the community.

I have more thoughts, but I should probably get to work, so I’ll send this now.

Darrell





On Sep 19, 2014, at 07:47, Steven Feldman <shfeldman at gmail.com> wrote:

> I agree with Michael
> 
> The economics of running a big event (certainly over 500 and probably over 2/300) mean that costs per delegate will be higher than the smaller events even if we offset some of those cost with sponsorship. For a larger event we need a proper conference venue rather than some free university spaces, we need more network for streaming and wifi for delegates, catering costs tend to go up when you use a larger venue etc. 
> 
> If we want FOSS4G global (and potentially other FOSS4G events) to be a contributor to OSGeo’s funding then that should be understood by the community when we consider the pricing. FOSS4G 2013 returned about $150k to OSGeo, that was a bit less than the amount that we raised from sponsorship i.e. delegates covered most of their costs from the fees and sponsorship was the contribution to OSGeo but another way to look at it was that each delegate contributed about $175 with part of their costs being contributed by sponsors (I have grossly simplified for this mail). This is a key policy decision that needs to be discussed before seeking proposals for FOSS4G 2016 and it connects with a bigger topic regarding the purpose of OSGeo, how much funding it needs and how it should be raised.
> 
> Surely we want the big gala event for as many people as possible AND the cosy intimate gatherings of communities in a country or region?
> Surely we want outreach to new geographies outside of NA and EU AND a big event that attracts business and government in our two largest regions and grows the pot?
> Surely we want an event that generates funding for OSGeo AND uses those funds to support code sprints, projects, outreach and education
> 
> There is no reason why our FOSS4G program cannot embrace all of these aspirations and objectives.
> ______
> Steven
> 

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