[Board] a request for you

Thu Oct 29 15:59:47 PDT 2015

Thanks Jody!!!

Yes, OSGeo is great but we want to have a stronger and greater one!!!

Best.

Maria

----------------------------------------------------
Prof. Maria Antonia Brovelli
Vice Rector for Como Campus and GIS Professor
Politecnico di Milano

ISPRS WG IV/5 "Web and Cloud Based Geospatial Services and Applications"; OSGeo; ICA-OSGeo-ISPRS AB; NASA WorldWind Europa Challenge; SIFET
Sol Katz Award 2015

Via Natta, 12/14 - 22100 COMO (ITALY)
Tel. +39-031-3327336 - Mob. +39-328-0023867 - fax. +39-031-3327321
e-mail1: <mailto:maria.brovelli at polimi.it> maria.brovelli at polimi.it
e-mail2: prorettrice at como.polimi.it

________________________________
Da: Jody Garnett <jody.garnett at gmail.com>
Inviato: giovedì 29 ottobre 2015 23.39
A: Maria Antonia Brovelli
Cc: OSGeo Board
Oggetto: Re: [Board] a request for you

G'Day Maria:

We are indeed starting to take steps, the first one for me (as noted) is to get our sponsorship game in order. After that we will have a better estimate for Michael to build a budget around. Which will allow us to plan activities proactively. I have a few ideas on how to go about this, but we have to tread carefully as there is a lot of pent up demand (even if just in the form of ideas).

Keep an eye on this space, and thanks for encouraging this years board.

--
Jody Garnett

On 28 October 2015 at 14:56, Maria Antonia Brovelli <maria.brovelli at polimi.it<mailto:maria.brovelli at polimi.it>> wrote:
Dear Directors
saturday evening I was so lucky to run into a Paul Ramsey's tweet related to the mail I had sent some time ago to you (https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/board/2015-October/013400.html). I have to say that I was lucky because I'm not an assiduous frequenter of twitter ;-)
But this was the occasion to start a (limited) discussion (140-character is definitely not enough!) about spending or not spending "our" money and how to do that.
Paul concluded that "Despite repeated attempt to have plan/policy, OSGeo lurches from minor spending kurfuffle to minor kurfuffle. Maybe #future better." and I'm sure about the last point.
In my opinion OSGeo has to plan at least annually which is the target, what we want to reach and (consequently) how to invest the money we have. This means also discussing  about volunteer activity and paid work.
Just to mention some cases: the activity of the incubator or the SAC's activity or communication activities (via social media), or the creation of a new website. Do we need to pay someone for working on that?  Some time ago we spoke about OSGeo cloud but some people have not experience about that, other people have not time, other again have neither time nor experience. So, at the end, nothing happened at all.

There are also other activities we are not considering at  the moment but that can be useful: for instance the production of OSGeo MOOCs (we have GeoForAll and therefore experts in education: why not to take advantage of these people for producing, as OSGeo,  professional MOOCS?) And why not to think about OSGeo summer of code, giving students and young people the possibility of implementing pieces of OSGeo software?

In my opinion it is the very time of having a clear plan/policy.
My proposal to the Board is to analyse the current situation, what we want to do and where we want to go and to propose such a plan to the community. Once we have decided that,  it would be easier to decide what is strategic and what is secondary and how to spend the money.
And,at the end, in my opinion, the point is not to spend the money we have, but to invest them.
But, for doimg that, we need a plan....

Thanks for considering my request. I know that it is a huge work but  designing/proposing strategies is one of your committments and we know that you are a wonderful team of Directors!
Best!
Maria

P.S. Obviously I'm available for any discussion, if needed.

----------------------------------------------------
Prof. Maria Antonia Brovelli
Vice Rector for Como Campus and GIS Professor
Politecnico di Milano

ISPRS WG IV/5 "Web and Cloud Based Geospatial Services and Applications"; OSGeo; ICA-OSGeo-ISPRS AB; NASA WorldWind Europa Challenge; SIFET
Sol Katz Award 2015

Via Natta, 12/14 - 22100 COMO (ITALY)
Tel. +39-031-3327336 - Mob. +39-328-0023867 - fax. +39-031-3327321
e-mail1: maria.brovelli at polimi.it<mailto:maria.brovelli at polimi.it>
e-mail2: prorettrice at como.polimi.it<mailto:prorettrice at como.polimi.it>

________________________________________
Da: Board <board-bounces at lists.osgeo.org<mailto:board-bounces at lists.osgeo.org>> per conto di Jeff McKenna <jmckenna at gatewaygeomatics.com<mailto:jmckenna at gatewaygeomatics.com>>
Inviato: mercoledì 28 ottobre 2015 20.20
A: OSGeo Board
Oggetto: Re: [Board] sponsorship document

Thanks Jody, I have added my name to the working group.  I am moving
this to the public discussion (as mentioned on your wiki draft page).
As I mentioned offline, I do like giving the small
businesses/consultants a more reachable price point than 3000 USD, so I
am glad that you have subsequently added a 1k option
(http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OSGeo_2015_Sponsorship).

Also, regarding organization size, could you explain this more?  Is this
a guideline, or are you proposing that organizations must sponsor
according to the number of employees they have?  I'll give you a
physical example: for my local provincial non-profit GIS association (I
was on their board a long time as well, ha, small world) the lowest
sponsor level (bronze) is now 500 CAD.  For many years this was 250 CAD,
and it just this went up to 500 CAD this year for bronze.  My company is
a bronze sponsor, as well as a huge vendor, which I think is great that
both organizations are involved there, I'm happy to see me listed with
them.  However, that brings up several issues.  What would happen if we
have 1000 USD as the bronze sponsor? (which I cannot afford, so I'd be
gone)  What would happen if organization size was <3 for bronze?  That
then knocks out both sponsors.

Long story short, I do like adding more sponsor levels, especially for
the average sized small business (the average business size in my
province of Nova Scotia is 1.5 workers).  I like seeing as many logos as
possible there, promoting their support for OSGeo.  So I even like a 500
USD option.

As a side note (yet strongly related), I saw today someone asking about
the OSGeo service providers page.  Yes, interesting timing to be
mentioning that :)

-jeff

On 2015-10-27 4:00 PM, Jody Garnett wrote:
> You are welcome to take notes/ideas on the
> wiki page <http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OSGeo_2015_Sponsorship>, if so
> please "join" the working group
> <http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/2015_Sponsorship_Drive_Working_Group> (by
> adding your name to the list) rather than as a board member.
>
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