[OSGeo-Conf] Who's Got Next?

[Helena Mitasova]

Eric,

how about taking the lead and organize the 2010 regional North  
America OSGEo conference in Denver?
it could even be at the same time you had in the proposal (Barcelona  
is in early Sept, NA OSGeo would be in December so no conflict there).
I am sure many people from US would welcome a conference closer to  
home, especially those in all levels of governments and academia who  
cannot afford to travel overseas - this has been discussed a lot on  
the OSGeo list after this year's conference.

At the same time I would like to re-iterate my previous suggestion to  
organize big world OSGeo conference/congress every other year,  
choosing a different continent each time (this would also address the  
issue mentioned by Paul about being upfront which geographical area  
is preferred) and devote the year in between for regional conferences  
so that more people have access to OSGeo events.
And we could still have the smaller annual project or state/national  
conferences or symposia  as some of them have longer history than  
OSGeo itself.

Helena

P.S. As for the Eric's notes behind the votes for Barcelona - only  
those who casted their votes can explain their reasoning (maybe  
something we should include in the process ?) but it may be as simple  
as the proposed time - early september may work better for more  
people than december - or as subtle as "where do I want to go to  
visit versus which place would be better for OSGeo?" , so the  
politics and issues of power may not play a role at all.

Helena Mitasova
Associate Professor
Department of Marine, Earth
and Atmospheric Sciences
1125 Jordan Hall, Campus Box 8208
North Carolina State University
Raleigh NC 27695-8208
http://skagit.meas.ncsu.edu/~helena/



On Dec 20, 2008, at 11:39 PM, Eric Wolf wrote:

> My two-cents...
>
> Maybe it would be worth encouraging the development of regional  
> events and then just have the international FOSS4G rotate through.  
> This provides for two things:
>
> 1. The regional LOCs don't feel like they wasted their time if the  
> effort was towards a known conference. So, instead of creating an  
> entire, big conference, we just get asked to increase the size of  
> what we are already doing.
>
> 2. Groups in the further reaches actually get to develop regional  
> support for FOSS4G. Folks who cannot travel are able to  
> participate, rather than just the fortunate few globetrotters who  
> can make it to the big international event.
>
> What I saw of the Beijing proposal almost had more of a regional  
> character. And I'm sure China has both a strong FOSS community and  
> a large number of people who are not allowed to travel abroad. The  
> same could be said for South America. There is some fantastic  
> support for FOSS but they weren't even represented with a bid (or  
> even mentioned in Paul's discussion).
>
> I'm very interested in a US regional FOSS4G conference. If we have  
> to wait for 2011 (at the soonest) for a US FOSS4G, it'll be at the  
> end of Obama's first term. I think it's important to establish that  
> there are FOSS alternatives to ESRI when it comes to meeting the  
> new President's goals for sharing government information.
>
> That's my 2cents..
>
> -Eric
> -=--=---=----=----=---=--=-=--=---=----=---=--=-=-
> Eric B. Wolf                          720-209-6818
> USGS Geographer
> Center of Excellence in GIScience
> PhD Student
> CU-Boulder - Geography
>
>
>
> On Sat, Dec 20, 2008 at 9:21 PM, Paul Ramsey  
> <pramsey at cleverelephant.ca> wrote:
> I'd like to raise the idea of being more explicit about what we,
> OSGeo, desire in bids. We have in the past said we weren't going to
> explicitly add "geography" to the RFP, but I can't help but feel that
> we are to some extent we are doing it implicitly, and that's probably
> not fair to bidders who aren't in the "target region" for a given
> year.
>
> In my handicapping of the process for this year, I figured that if
> credible bids from North America or Europe were available, it was
> unlikely that a bid from anywhere else was going to win, just because
> the previous two events were "afar" from the bulk of the OSGeo
> development community. As it happened, we had bids from both, and one
> of the European bids won, which is kind of as one would expect, given
> that the last European event was in 2006 (that's a four year
> interregnum, had they failed to win, it would be at least a five year
> gap between events in a very FOSS4G-friendly and FOSS4G-funding
> locale).
>
> Was this fair to Beijing? How much better would their bid have to have
> been for us to choose another location in Asia/Pacific, right after
> Sydney, and a third non-NA-EURO location in a row? I felt that the top
> bids were all sufficiently good that there was little left to
> distinguish them at a rational level, which doesn't leave much room
> for someone to really "blow it out of the water". All that's left is
> our own biases, which probably include, let's face it, geography.
>
> We've got a pretty demanding bid process now, and bidders are doing a
> fair amount of leg-work. Four bidders means three bidders who feel
> they've worked hard "for nothing". I don't want people entering the
> bidding process if they really don't stand a chance for (implicit)
> geographical reasons.
>
> I think we should be explicit, and try to get bids from particular
> regions on a schedule: Europe, North America, Other. I apologize to
> Other in advance, but if FOSS4G is going to be the "meeting of the
> tribes" we need to hold it closer to the tribes more often, and the
> tribes are mostly in Euro/NA.
>
> P.
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