[Board] Sponsoring FOSS4G 2018

[Jody Garnett]

The motion has two "disagree" -0 votes, but nobody did a "block" -1 vote
near as I can see?
Reading the comments Jeff intended to mark down a -1..

So the discussion is not so much a bout sponsorship, but about strategy,
how to best support the event, and outreach in the region.

Options:

a) gold++
- gold sponsorship (enough for a booth)
- adjusting our budget for the TGP
- see if we can fund video recording

b) platinum sponsorship
- provides a booth for osgeo activities
- we have the understanding that the additional funding is funnelled into
the TGP

c) Tanzanite sponsorship
- ensure we headline our own conference in terms of support
- encourage LOC to use some of the funding for video processing and sharing
of talks

Previously we ran into social difficulty sponsoring foss4g 2017,
understandable because we were also providing initial financial backing and
collecting revenue from the event. This is confusing for two reasons. A
mixed message of showing up as both a host and a sponsor. Also puts us
competing for attention with event sponsors who are paying for the
visibility of being seen. We primarily want to pay to support a great
event, outreach (TGP), and archive (videos if they can be recorded).

I like the idea of having a gold sponsorship (look we are going to struggle
to populate a booth with people during the event) and then explicitly focus
on supporting the outreach (TGP) and archiving (video recording if
possible). I think it does not put us in competitions with sponsors (we are
already visible as host) and allows us to explore how we can take on
additional responsibility each year (TGP, Videos) rather than watch
expectations increase for each years local organizing committee.

Consider this a request to separate the concerns, get OSGeo a booth and
then let OSGeo fund additional activities directly as our hearts (and
budget) dictates.

If there is a desire to coordinate with the LOC specifically we could ask
if we could support the video/video processing as host (rather than as part
of sponsorship). I should note that such a sponsorship is usually very
valuable from a marketing standpoint as the exposure goes far beyond the
event (as an example look at this video wall for foss4gna
<https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEqor3hXvGSofDWzQez3tbg>).


--
Jody Garnett


On Tue, 19 Jun 2018 at 14:15, María Arias de Reyna <delawen at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> So, we had some discussion about this on previous IRC meetings. As this
> year we didn't give any seed money for the organization of the main FOSS4G,
> we were planning to give sponsorship money. Remember that not used money
> goes back to OSGeo anyway.
>
> This year there is a special effort on Travel Grant, so most of the
> sponsorship money will be used for it. We want to support and push OSGeo in
> Africa.
>
> Here is the latest loomio poll:
> https://www.loomio.org/d/TaRPqFbs/platinum-sponsorship-for-foss4g-2018
>
> The motion didn't pass with a -1.
>
> Let the discussion start!
> _______________________________________________
> Board mailing list
> Board at lists.osgeo.org
> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/board
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