[OSGeo-Conf] Conference for Central and Eastern Europe

[Lluís Vicens]

El dt 20 de 09 de 2011 a les 14:10 +0200, en/na Jorge Gaspar Sanz
Salinas va escriure:

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> I'm cc-ing Lluis Vicens from the Spanish FOSS4G conference team. As a
> member of a quite succesful conference I think his opinion is really
> valuable on this discussion and on this mailing list.
> 
> El 19/09/11 23:01, Jachym Cepicky escribió:
> > Hi Paolo,
> > 
> > thinking about that - I found that in general bad idea: why would
> > Germans or Italians give up their conference, for pan-europan one? And
> > if they would not, who would come where? Having 3 Foss4g
> > conferences/year (+ osm, + some non-foss4g ones) is simply too much.
> > 
> > But having a chat with Martin Landa, and thinking about it for a
> > while, I could imagine, that we would re-use the "olympic" model:
> > 
> > Proposal (and really, that is *just another idea*"): Having once / two
> > years Foss4g-Europe, and every second year regional conferences?
> > 
> 
> Well I can't see any successful conference giving up for an European
> one, far from their location.
> 
> But a two year European conference, when FOSS4G is far away (say
> Beijing) could be interesting, travelling inside Europe is for sure more
> affordable than going overseas if you have to convince your boss to go
> there.
> 
> Probably it wouldn't be as "developer focused" as the main FOSS4G, but I
> think there are a lot of approaches for a geospatial conferences on free
> software to be able to present a good conference program (see Arnulf
> post[1]).
> 
> Best regards
> 
> [1]
> http://arnulf.us/sevendipity/archives/43-OSGeo-The-Jack-of-all-Trades.html
> 
> - -- 
> Jorge Gaspar Sanz Salinas
> http://es.osgeo.org
> http://jorgesanz.net
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I can only talk from our experience here in Girona, and probably it is
pretty biased. We are organizing the Spanish "foss4g" conference every
year (now I'm preparing the sixth edition). I think that the key aspect,
here in Spain, is the language. Probably the situation is improving but
for most of Spaniards, English language is still seen as a some sort of
barrier. People is feeling more confortable discussing and sharing
ideas, projects and trivial experiences in their native language and
this is one of the pillars where the spanish foss4g is sustained, I
think. Probably is the same for the german fossgis, ...

So, I believe that mantaining our local/regional/national conferences is
a good option in order to spread the existence of OSGeo, to spread the
knowledge and the use of free and open source software among the
local/regional/national companies, users, .... 

The big circus is annually moving around the globe, so If anyone is
really interested the meet the main developers of the foss software
projects can attend the international foss4g in an English environment.
But keeping our local/regional/national foss4g, we are giving an option
to so many people (who lives English language as a barrier), and letting
them to share knowledge and experiences in a more confortable way,
giving the chance to generate new bussines opportunities, putting in
contact national companies, ... This is our leitmotiv.

On the other hand, I wonder if the start of a pan-european foss4g
conference, could cause a decrease of attendants to the international
foss4g... specially those years when the conference will be held quite
far (from us, and from a European point of view, of course). How can be
perceived this situation from the Board of OSGeo.

This is the point of view from a non developer, but from the point of
view of an organizer of a conference planned for giving a place to
anyone interested in the foss4g: developers, users, companies,
individuals, public administration, education, ...

Cheers,
Lluís
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