[Board] Board task: finalize liability agreement with FOSS4G 2016 committee

[Jeff McKenna]

Hello Board members,

This will be the first public task of the new Board, and may be the most 
important one we deal with all year.  And yes, it is extremely time 
sensitive.

Some background (instead of pointing to 5 different threads spanning as 
many different mailing lists):

The FOSS4G Bonn local committee needs OSGeo to financially guarantee the 
event.  The OSGeo Conference Committee worked very hard on producing an 
agreement, that passed many keen experienced eyes, both on the OSGeo 
side as well as on the Bonn committee side. This agreement was approved 
by the entire OSGeo Conference Committee and the Bonn local committee, 
and 8 of the 9 OSGeo Board members.  One OSGeo Board member voted -1. 
The original agreement exists at: 
https://svn.osgeo.org/osgeo/foss4g/2016/financial_stuff/agreement_with_osgeo/Agreement-between-OSGeo-and-FOSSGISeV-2016.pdf

As for past FOSS4G agreements, Seoul was the first time that the OSGeo 
Board had a direct signed agreement with the local committee, between 
Sanghee and myself, agreeing on such details as profit sharing; for all 
of the other FOSS4G events, those details were handled in the agreement 
between the professional conference organizing company (PCO).  Steven 
Feldman compiled some details from some of the recent FOSS4G events, in 
a Google spreadsheet (I just sent each board member an invite to that 
document).

At the time that this 2016 agreement was being initially proposed, it 
was before FOSS4G Seoul, and it was honestly a little tricky to be 
signing such a commitment before we knew the outcome of the FOSS4G Seoul 
event (like any event, we could have lost money).  But now, I feel 
everything is more clear for the Board: FOSS4G Seoul was successful, the 
break-even point was 400 attendees, and we went over that to roughly 560 
attendees.  So OSGeo doesn't have to worry about that, and now we can 
financially guarantee the 2016 Bonn event, for 100,000 euros, as was 
originally proposed.

I want to make sure that each Board member supports this, and I will 
personally do my best to meet privately with whoever has questions.

Maxi, now that we are through FOSS4G Seoul, do you yourself have any 
concerns not handled now?  If you do (or any Board member) I suggest 
that we meet through Google Hangout on this Thursday. Possible time: 
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?year=2015&month=10&day=8&hour=18&min=0&sec=0%2015.00UTC 
  (sorry Venka/Sanghee that time is not do-able for you, but you can 
voice your opinions here or to me privately, sorry about this one 
meeting time)

I'm getting many direct emails on how this is important for the 2016 
committee.  We OSGeo must get this agreement passed.  It is on next 
week's Board agenda, but I hope we can solve this this week.  It will be 
a team effort.

Thanks all,

-jeff