[OSGeo-Conf] Checking in with the Beijing FOSS4G team

[Peter Batty]

Greetings to Gao Ang and the Beijing team,

I hope all is well. I just wanted to check in how things are moving along.
As I've mentioned previously I think, there's a timeline from last year at
http://2011.foss4g.org/content/timeline. Last year we had the call for
workshops out on January 15th and the call for papers out on January 30th.
You really need the web site up in order to do that effectively, so that's
an important pre-req that needs to happen soon. It's also important to get
a sponsorship prospectus completed and get some sponsors signed up soon -
this is not on the timeline, but we had the prospectus done in December and
offered a 10% discount to sponsors who signed up by the end of January. I
don't have the exact numbers to hand, but I would guess we had 3/4 of the
overall sponsorship money committed by the end of January, so this approach
worked well (offering a discount for early sponsor sign up).

The good news is that on the traditional timeline we've had the call for
papers open for two and a half months (closing mid April), and I really
don't think it needs to be open for that long. The vast majority of
abstract submissions were submitted in the last couple of days anyway! So I
think you could still close the call for papers around this date even if it
goes out a little later.

However, I do think it's really important to get the web site operational
very soon, get these calls for workshops and papers out, and start getting
sponsors signed up. If you have questions or need advice on anything, use
this email list - I and other former conference chairs and members of the
community will be glad to do what we can to help.

Cheers,
    Peter.
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