[Board] Re: [OSGeo-Conf] "OSGeo Teach-in

[jo at frot.org]

On Mon, Jun 09, 2008 at 02:42:53PM -0700, Paul Ramsey wrote:
> "That's a great idea, but I have philosophical objections!"
> 
> Jo and Markus want something European. Arnulf wants nothing commercial
> under the OSGeo banner. You want creative commons materials. Someone
> else wants student scholarships.

What a terrible reduction of my astounding reasoning process!
My reasoning, if you can call it that, went somewhat like this.

The initial "Teach-in" proposal identifies a few reasons why FOSS4G is 
unsuitable for a bunch of people who should be in its target market for 
FOSS GIS workshops - increasing cost of long-distance travel, the inability 
of publically-funded employers to pay for international trips.
There's a gap in the market, and a "power-user" community happy to pay
workshop rates comparable with proprietary companies. So far so great!

But the economic and cultural forces that reduce the viability of
FOSS4G aren't going away. It may face becoming a touring regional conference
rather than a truly international one; this move may exacerbate that.

FOSS4G is at the core of OSGeo's "mission" and our commitment to it
takes up the most part of OSGeo's discretionary spending money -
spending money that we only have much of because of Paul's work on making 
such a financial success of last year's FOSS4G!

Historically there is an ongoing debate about how FOSS4G is run, and
there have been suggestions that an increased rate for workshops
would either enable it to run the conference part for free,
or to return more money to OSGeo.

The Board has never had a consensus about whether FOSS4G should
be more "deliberately money making" or kept "at the grassroots",
so we collectively sit on the big fence, and wait and see what
happens next year, each year. 

FOSS4G Workshops are always oversubscribed, both for presenters 
and attenders. As Hobu put it, the economics are "screwed" -
it takes a lot of time and effort to develop the materials.
The workshops provide a large part of the conference revenue;
the reward for presenters is token (one free entry?).

So i would like to know a lot more about what the potential
impact would be on FOSS4G of holding separate workshop events,
anywhere in the world. I'd like to know if the conference commitee is
satisfied with the way FOSS4G is positioned and run now. 

That's why I am happy to see this discussion here in the Conference
Committee where the people who will be living with the consequences,
may have similar vested interests in running local workshop events,
and relevant management and planning experience, can help with decision.

http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OSGeo_Conference_Policy - not a decision
about one instance of a workshop event, but about OSGeo's
organisational relation to conferences in general. Not a spat over
someone's plans but a chance to take a deep breath, check direction and
try to ensure the collected integrity of what OSGeo promotes eventwise.

I can't do a "Jo wants X" soundbite version; shrug. I don't want to
suggest dismissiveness of Paul and Jeff's proposal. But I would love
to avoid more bouts of "is this ethically right" frustration over
future decisions made on a case-by-case basis. At least the people we
are pissing off now are our friends and collaborators and we can get
through it and have beers afterwards. This way OSGeo can save on
frustrating and alienating future collaborators further out from the
social and cultural network at its core, who may have different
and more formal expectations of how proposals are negotiated. :P

If there is a definite date by which the proposers need to start
marketing and labelling their event, that would help focus this
debate a lot.

love, 


jo
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