[OSGeo-Conf] Who's Got Next?

Sun Dec 21 09:33:29 EST 2008

Helena Mitasova wrote:
> 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).

Helena your idea is cool, I thought the same, if I wouldn't win, but I 
even though it would not be fair for who was organizing the FOSS4G.
I think your idea make sense but I would like to plan it a little 
better, maybe for the bid of 2011:
- a double bid?  EU-NA?
- a tripple one? EU-NA-Other?

if we start from 2010 we have to do we bid again, my budget and projects 
would be null. I can't say to a sponsor we have people from all over the 
world or maybe just from europe...
am I wrong?

regards
Lorenzo

> 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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