[OSGeo-Conf] Questions for FOSS4G 2013 teams

[Cameron Shorter]

And following on in the same theme as Peter, what human capital are you 
expecting to draw upon? There is a huge amount of volunteer work 
required to bring a successful FOSS4G home. Committee participants with 
a string of big titles are useful for opening doors, but what also makes 
a huge impact are people who step up and do the hundreds of small tasks 
required to get things done. I was blessed to have a  handful of these 
people at FOSS4G 2009, some of whom where not in country. So what I'm 
looking for in answers are people who already have a track record of 
doing the hard slog work for similar successful events, or people with a 
track record of coordinating volunteers for other activities (such as an 
open source project). Names of "doers" that we'd recognise from osgeo 
email lists would certainly be helpful.

On 4/04/2012 11:55 PM, Peter Batty wrote:
> Here are three questions for all the teams:
>
> (1) How many (global) FOSS4G events has the proposed conference chair 
> been to, and which ones? And please list the same info for any of your 
> committee members that have been to previous events.
>
> (Note: I don't think it is a pre-req to have been to any, but 
> obviously it helps with continuity and building on previous events)
>
> (2) To the conference chairs: are you willing and able to put in a lot 
> of time to this? Has your employer agreed to give you a reasonable 
> amount of time off from your normal work responsibilities, as you will 
> need this? And in the event that you were not able to continue as 
> conference chair, who would step in to replace you?
>
> (I ask these questions as in Denver our original conference chair did 
> have to step down because of unforeseen circumstances).
>
> (3) The core mission of FOSS4G is to be the "meeting of the tribes" of 
> the open source geo development community, which has one set of 
> requirements: it has a very techie focus, people it want to be 
> informal and casual and "non-commercial". Many people, myself 
> included, also see FOSS4G as an opportunity to introduce new people to 
> open source geospatial - to be more of an outreach event, have more 
> introductory level sessions, more non-technical sessions. But to some 
> extent the requirements for this conflict with the core mission of 
> FOSS4G - you risk losing the friendly techie collaborative atmosphere, 
> you risk being seen as "too commercial" etc. Some people in the 
> community would rather see FOSS4G be a strictly developer-focused event.
>
> So to the question ... to what extent do you see your FOSS4G having an 
> outreach function in addition to the core focus on existing open 
> source developers, and how would you address the challenges mentioned 
> here?
>
>
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-- 
Cameron Shorter
Geospatial Solutions Manager
Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254

Think Globally, Fix Locally
Geospatial Solutions enhanced with Open Standards and Open Source
http://www.lisasoft.com

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