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

[Paul Ramsey]

On 1-Oct-06, at 4:47 AM, Arnulf Christl wrote:

> Fine, but do we need to be attractive to the more general public. I  
> think
> we actually "want" an industry niche event - its the meeting of the
> tribes. The more general public is better reached at Where 2.0, OSCON,
> Intergeo, CeBit, etc. What we are talking about is the event  
> (currently)
> restricted to some 750 to 1000 people. That is the niche population.

I want to take this on.  Should we organize the conference (and we  
leaning closer to positive now) the reason would be to fertilize our  
local marketplace.  Invite every GIS coordinator within 500 miles,  
flog them over and over to come, so that they come and hear all the  
great success stories, feel the energy, see the companies, and get  
charged to try open source stuff.  So being accessible to a general  
(geospatial) audience is actually a very important thing, IMHO, this  
is not just a conference for those already "in the know".  At least,  
not if I organize it.

This is a lot like what happened with the Lausanne conference, when  
you look at the attendee list, it has a lot of "local" participants,  
folks within a few hundred miles.

Paul