[OSGeo-Conf] North American FOSS4G conference

[Bart van den Eijnden]

I totally agree with what Volker says here.

My personal preference would be a two year rotation between Europe and North America, with only local conferences in Other.

Bart

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 23, 2011, at 7:52 PM, Volker Mische <volker.mische at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> I already wrote it in my blog post about the FOSS4G, but it should also
> hit the mailing lists as well.
> 
> I don't think that a yearly North American FOSS4G is a good idea. I fear
> that people will be going there and the global one will die (especially
> next year, when it is "in some other country").
> 
> A lot of devs in the FOSS4G world are from North America (I'd even say
> the majority, but I'm not sure about it). Those will definitely go to a
> North American event.
> 
> I could imagine that many people from Europe can justify one conference
> to go somewhere in the world, when there's enough value. Which is for
> me, in case for the FOSS4G, meeting almost all core developers of the
> various FOSS4G projects.
> 
> If I have the choice to meet all the North American developers and a lot
> of other ones as well, and the choice between meeting some American and
> European developers perhaps at some other place in the world (where it
> might even be harder to get there (think about past events like
> Australia)). Where would you go?
> 
> And also important: where would the sponsors invest? It was already a
> hard time for the Sydney conference to cover the costs, how hard would
> it be if there's another big conference?
> 
> For me those are reasons why the a global event might die, and that
> would be a shame. As we heard at (I think) the AGM, past conferences
> planted seeds in those locations.
> 
> The rotating between Europe, North America and somewhere else makes a
> lot of sense to me, but if there will be a North American conference
> every year, we can just drop the "somewhere else" and go for a Europe,
> North America, North America rotation.
> 
> For me the solution would be to make more localised conferences in North
> America, like a West Coast, East Coast, Central, Canadian one. This
> won't draw to much developers away from the global one. It would kind of
> the same as in Europe, where we also have local Chapter conferences.
> 
> Cheers,
>  Volker
> _______________________________________________
> Conference_dev mailing list
> Conference_dev at lists.osgeo.org
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/conference_dev
>