[Conference-europe] when and where

[Peter Baumann]

Hi all,

nice discussion, and very valid points made! Just one facet:

We contacted ESRI for sponsoring of this year's FOSS4G-Europe, response: we are 
already sponsoring FOSS4G-world and cannot do both. We also contacted further 
companies around, and they uniformly said something like "you are open source, 
so competition to our products - why should we sponsor that?"

In the end we got some little money from German Weather Service (DWD) and from a 
German geo magazine - see main page of foss4g.org. Oh, and we got some barrels 
of beer from Becks.

Bottom line: sponsoring is a hard business, particularly in Europe.

my 2 cents,
Peter


On 08/22/2014 11:00 AM, Jachym Cepicky wrote:
> Hi,
>
> 2014-08-22 9:37 GMT+02:00 Johan Van de Wauw <johan.vandewauw at gmail.com>:
>> On Fri, Aug 22, 2014 at 2:24 AM, Karel Charvat <charvat at ccss.cz> wrote:
>>> I think, that umber of attendants is something, what is difficult predictable. Not so easy to reach 200 attendants.
>>>
>>> I am all time thinking, how to do something, what could attract larger community. It seems to me, that till now we didn't succeed to attract commercial sector to broader participation. Seems to me, that maximum 5 - 10 percent of companies, who are using Open Source GI technologies, are participating on such events.
>>>
>>> More and more of so called Apps developers including independent developers is out of communities very often utilising other products or starting from scratch.  Seems for me critical, how to attract people.
>> I agree with Karel a lot. Compared to Foss4G in Nottingham I found
>> Bremen quite "academic". I don't think we need a separate commercial
>> track, but I think we should be able to attrack more "commercial"
>> people.
> Rather business than commercial (just words, I know)
>
>> Some ideas on how to do this:
>> * Get more involvement from local chapters. Eg.  the German, Dutch and
>> British all have successful conferences. I was surprised to see little
>> of their members in Bremen
> This is the reason, why this committee is active and I hope, you all,
> who is participating in this discussion will be promoting FOSS4G in
> your communities.
> BTW: Romanian chapter is active since beginning. I hope, others will join.
>
>
>> * The keynotes: I think we could get a better mix. Now there was no
>> keynote from an open source project, which could probably attract more
>> people. 2 were academic (or seem so when reading the website).
> It was at university, yes, it was a bit academic, but please, do not
> judge local organisation committee. It was presenters, who submitted
> the talks. So, having this in July -> academic talks, any other time
> -> business talks?
>
>> * The website: For a long time, we only had the keynotes and the
>> academic track online. I found it hard to justify my trip to foss4g-e
>> based on that program.
> It's always matter of schedule and FOSS4G-Europe always starts very
> late with organisation. If you want talks, you have to give people
> time, if you give them time, they will submit late, if they submit
> late, nothing will appear. And as usual, everybody is counting with
> deadline shift (remember last FOSS4G with no deadline shift?)... hen
> and egg problem. but we have to do it as global FOSS4G at this place:
> you are not waiting till talks are published for FOSS4G-Global, you
> are simply going since you know, it's gonna be great.
>
>
>> * Sponsors: It may sound silly, but an open source Geospatial
>> conference sponsered by Google and ESRI "seems" more worthwhile than
>> one which is not.
> FOSS4G-Europe in general has problems with sponsors. There are (except
> for Romania) very few or as much as none. I think, that "money does
> not smell", no matter from where it goes - certainly not from ESRI.
> ESRI is just another company in this geospatial industry. We are all
> heading same direction, they are only on different track. Open Source
> is not business model, it's development model and that it works, is
> already accepted. We have community, they have product. Accepting the
> money from them is OK, we should join people, not dived them.
>
> But this question is only academic - no money from ESRI come to
> FOSS4G-Europe ;-)
>
>> A lot of this is about the "image" of the conference, rather than the
>> actual content. I should add that I think this is something where this
>> group could be working on. Take some of the burden from the local
>> organisation away (so they can focus on the venue, ...). Website,
>> programme, sponsors are items which perhaps don't have to be run only
>> by the local organisers.
> This is what I'm asking for: hey guys, what should the conference look
> like, so its "ours" and we like it?
>
>> BTW: all these comments are here to make the programme even better. I
>> can not thank the organisers in Bremen enough for the great thing they
>> did.
>>
> Thank you all for this thread as well, it's important collective
> process, not one-man-show any more (lucky me)
>
> Jachym
>
>

-- 
Dr. Peter Baumann
  - Professor of Computer Science, Jacobs University Bremen
    www.faculty.jacobs-university.de/pbaumann
    mail: p.baumann at jacobs-university.de
    tel: +49-421-200-3178, fax: +49-421-200-493178
  - Executive Director, rasdaman GmbH Bremen (HRB 26793)
    www.rasdaman.com, mail: baumann at rasdaman.com
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