[Board] f2f meeting follow up

[Jody Garnett]

I saw this thread get into the details of the RFP - for that we have
volunteers on the conference committee. My goal as a board member is to
work on strategy, as the conference committee knows best about the RFP
wording and process.

*Q: *Based on the affordability report, and resulting discussion, did we as
the board have any direction to ask the conference committee to steer in?

My own feedback:

1) I was pleasantly surprised that the ticket cost of foss4g has not
changed significantly over the course of the events (indeed our most
expensive event was Sydney and our cheapest Korea).

I do not see any guidance to provide here (this was surprising to me).

2) Attendance continues to increase limiting appropriate venues

I do not see any guidence to provide here, our community and event is
growing. I think once we get around 3000 people we may be forced to settle
down to consider a fixed location, but at 1000-2000 we can still move it
around.

3) regional events are killing it

I do not see any guidence to provide here, our community and events is
growing.
The hope is this takes some of the strain from the global event, allowing
it to focus on outreach and advocacy more.

4) hard for students to attend (also journal, etc...)

There was a strong hope that travel grant program could help out a lot
here, that would make me sad as this was intended to work towards
diversity.

While there may be guidance here I am not close enough to the academic
world to provide useful direction.

5) diversity

The original intention of the travel grant was to bring diversity awareness
to our osgeo events (to apply regional events are asked to set a diversity
target which travel grant can help towards). During foss4g I attended a
diversity presentation that advocated creating a safe space.

*Guidance: *Trial the use of providing a safe space in the 2018 bid.

Similar recommendations online include:
- make female speakers a priority (not just in selection, but before hand
in promotion, one-on-one mentoring etc...).
- providing child care (this helps families attend)

Since these haver not been advocated by members of our community I am only
comfortable providing guidance on providing a safe space. Perhaps some of
these ideas can be tried out at regional conferences first.

6) time of year

The events have moved from September/October to August placing it in the
way of European holidays. With the bulk of our contributors in Europe this
has affected how many of our contributors can attend.

*Guidance: *Request September / October event (to maximize contributors who
can attend).

I understand next years event has plans to turn this into a holiday for
families which is a cunning plan.

7) travel / accommodation

I would like to avoid prime tourist season to avoid asking attendees pay
high airfair and accommodation costs. We did not have the number in the
affordability report to back this up (but Michael Smith was going to look
things up).

*Guidance: *Request September / October event (to avoid peak tourist
season).




--
Jody Garnett

On 20 August 2017 at 20:20, Jody Garnett <jody.garnett at gmail.com> wrote:

> If anyone is in position to post meeting mins please do so, I think we are
> all in transit so this will be tricky :)
>
> We have a number of items to report back to the community in: osgeo-eu and
> analysis/feedback on foss4g affordability.
>
> In the AGM we had very firm instruction by the conference committee that
> any direction would be needed (by Monday?) to inform the proposal process
> in 2019.
> --
> --
> Jody Garnett
>
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