[OSGeo-Conf] Fwd: FOSS4G 2007

[Frank Warmerdam]

Arnulf Christl wrote:
> Ah. Is that it? My perception (not as VisCom but as simple, dumb (sorry
> Paul :-) OSGeo participator) of FOSS4G is the meeting of the tribes. OSGeo
> still only covers a small part of the whole FOSSGIS universe. With FOSS4G
> I am explicitly not trying to reach out to Google and Oracle and folks who
> do not know about FOSSGIS already. We have said that we will have a
> natural upper limit of 1000 people anyway. We ar reaching 10 thousands at
> other occasions much more effectively.

Arnulf,

This is an interesting point.

Restating it in my terms, there is a concern that OSGeo only represents a
narrow profile of the total community of free software folks involved in
geospatial/geoinformatics.  So if we label the conference OSGeo it will
tend to make folks who don't consider themselves associated with, or
represented by OSGeo not want to get involved.  But by calling the conference
FOSS4G we make it clear that the conference is for the *whole* community and
that OSGeo is just serving as an organizer.

I certainly don't want people or projects to feel excluded from the conference
but rather than distance the conference from OSGeo, I'd rather make whatever
efforts I can to make it clear OSGeo is a "big tent" organization and aims
to welcome and support the community at large.  However, if we don't think
we can make that clear (or perhaps if others don't want that to be our
message), then I think making the conference a bit distinct from the
organization would be an acceptable fallback position.

PS. I'm not sure we have agreed on a natural upper limit of 1000 people,
though the idea has been mooted.  I am certainly not wanting to turn this
into a COMDEX or Oracle World style mammoth conference.

Best regards,
-- 
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org