[OSGeo-Conf] FOSS4G 2007 - whats in a name?

[Paul Ramsey]

What both "FOSS4G" and "OSGeo" have in common is that they are  
essentially meaningless, unfortunately. (FOSS4G actually has  
marginally more meaning, at least for the minimal subset of people  
who already know what "FOSS" stands for and only have to try and  
figure out the "G").

At the risk of being totally orthogonal to the current decision  
process, how about something completely new, made up of actual words?

* "FreeSpatial 2007"  (11 chars (ignoring the 2007))
* "Spatial Open Source 2007" (19 chars)

In fairness, spooled out to its actual words, OSGeo 2007 is not  
completely terrible:

* "Open Source Geospatial 2007" (22 chars)

By the same token, FOSS4G 2007 is a complete train wreck.

* "Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial 2007" (44 chars  
(well, at least it doesn't line wrap an 80 column terminal))

Far and away my favorite conference title for existing conference is  
Where 2.0.  Short and acronym free.  The "Location Intelligence"  
conference is also nice in that regard.

* "Vive Spatial Libre! 2007"  (with apologies to Charles de Gaule)

Paul




On 1-Oct-06, at 11:31 AM, Tyler Mitchell wrote:

> Arnful wrote:
>> Ah - I see another North American centered opinion (Hi mpg) added the
>> Open-only notion. So we are balanced now in numbers but the Free folk
>> cover more space. We still win the argument - at least spatially.
>
> Is this really North America vs. the world?  Then Helena and Allan  
> better move!
>
> You are coming at this from an ideological standpoint.  Do you  
> believe that having "F" in the name of a conference is going to  
> teach people that "free, as in speech" is important?  I believe  
> that to many people, seeing "free" in a title will still just mean  
> "free, as in beer".  Rather than trying to use the conference name  
> as a way to teach, aren't there better ways you can help educate  
> the masses to the importance of "free"?
>
> I doubt care to teach anything with the conference name, but want  
> to use it as an effective marketing tool for all the great project  
> communities and for OSGeo as the sponsoring organisation.
>
> I do believe that FOSS4G worked fine for this (and past) years, but  
> so did all the other names --OSG, MUM, EOGEO, GRASS, etc.  I don't  
> think it has hurt us, but I wonder if we can do even better with  
> something new that is distinct from historic conferences.  We are  
> bigger and better now that we are combined.
>
> I guess no matter what it is called this year, I want to say it's  
> the "OSGeo conference called..." so that I don't have to say it's  
> the "Free and Open Source Software For Geoinformatics conference".   
> (Life is too short to waste those precious few syllables!  Just  
> kidding.  It is a mouthful, but does taste good with a bit of  
> Gruyeres.)
>
> Thanks for the debate,
> Tyler
>
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