[OSGeo-Conf] Questions for FOSS4G 2013 teams

Wed Apr 4 16:49:40 EDT 2012

Hi, I would like add some information. About first question. There were one more person in Barcelona Premysl Vohnout. So I expect, that our team has a lot of experiences from FOSS4G/

About second question. We have team of person experienced with conference organising. We organised 1& years conference related to GIS in Agriculture, which was last year finalised by World Congress. So we know, that staff will have to put effort to organise such event. We mainly expect, that technical staff will contribute to program organisation. For administration and organisation we have also experienced persons. Due the fact, that it is for us not new to organise such events, we are sure, that we have capacity. Due the fact, that our team are mainly Open Source developers, we can also expect some enthusiasm.

About third point, we would like find good compromise between conference for developers and promoting of Open Source to large community. Acceptance of Open Sources by public servant is important for future development of FOSS.
Karel

-----Original Message-----
From: conference_dev-bounces at lists.osgeo.org [mailto:conference_dev-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Jachym Cepicky
Sent: Wednesday, April 04, 2012 10:30 PM
To: Peter Batty
Cc: conference
Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Conf] Questions for FOSS4G 2013 teams

Hi,

for the Prague team:

On 4.4.2012 15:55, 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)

Chair: Karel Charvat - Denver
Program Committee: Jachym Cepicky (me) Lausanne, Denver

Members of Organization committee:
Jan Jezek  - Lausanne, Victoria, Cape Town, Barcelona Milan Novotny - Lausanne

> 
> (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).

This question will be answered by the chair (Karel) himself. I can only say, that since he is the employer of himself, it should be possible to find time for organization. The whole team already organized several events (about half of planed size) and so people are partly self-organizing.

> 
> (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?
> 

Me, as Open Source GIS Software developer && FOSS4G Conference fan: I like the idea, FOSS4G is more developer-oriented. FOSS4G is unique event, where I know, I can meet developers, people, I know from  mailing list, personally - to add face to the name. This is very important to me.

On the other hand, we are trying to be "open community" - we
(developers) are setting up mailing lists, writing documentation for newbies and hoping, that community around our projects will grow - we certainly like the idea, new people will arrive to your community for various reasons.

We are also aware, that for development of our projects, needs to be founded. And budget is generated by non-technical people, who just believe in our technology. In Czech, there is national INSPIRE conference round the date, FOSS4G 2013 is proposed to take place. For the last year's bit, we proposed to join those communities together.
Naturally, we will discuss this possibility for 2013 again. INSPIRE people are users (or even founders of development) of our projects and I think, every developer wants to compete other projects and succeed on the "market".

When I was in Denver, I met several people there, who were just for the first time at such event and were amazed by the fact, what kind of people is producing the software, they plan to use (they were really new to the community).

So, to answer your question finally: As you mentioned, core function of FOSS4G is to me bringing developers together. But FOSS4G never was just meeting of geeks. Introducing software projects *and* development teams to non-technical or technical users plays another key role. The scope of FOSS4G is to put all those ingredients together and gently shake, not stir. The unique spirit of FOSS4G is, we meat each other, but we are also wide open to newcomers. Newcomers are warmly welcomed and handled with care.

Jachym

--
Jachym Cepicky
Help Service - Remote Sensing s.r.o.
jachym.cepicky at gmail.com | jachym at hsrs.cz http://les-ejk.cz | http://bnhelp.cz

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