[Conference-europe] when and where

[Karel Charvat]

I agree with Johan comments and in reality, i would like thanks to anybody, who is organising any event.. i tis not easy process and we all are learning.
But I think, that in any case focus of any conference depend, who will organise such event. If it will be University, than is clear, that focus will be more academic.
I think, that here has to be roll of program Committee, not only select, where and when but also actively contribute to the preparation. It is clear, that people from business, or eventually people dealing with EC project, could have much better chances to organise some special track like FOOS4Bussiness or FOSS in EC projects. So here will be good to things, in the contract with local organisers agreed, for example on such events and offer them help. Or together with local organisers organise call on guarantees of special tracks
Karel


-----Original Message-----
From: conference-europe-bounces at lists.osgeo.org [mailto:conference-europe-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Johan Van de Wauw
Sent: Friday, August 22, 2014 9:38 AM
To: Karel Charvat
Cc: foss4g-europe
Subject: Re: [Conference-europe] when and where

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.

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
* 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).
* 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.
* Sponsors: It may sound silly, but an open source Geospatial conference sponsered by Google and ESRI "seems" more worthwhile than one which is not.

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.

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.

Johan
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