[OSGeo-Conf] [OSGeo-Discuss] regional conferences

Mon Jun 18 06:31:48 PDT 2012

Hi,
Volker, the idea is nice, but there are some problems. For example, if you
will have only regional presenter, you never will attract large community.
So to do the real regional and not semiregional could be in some cases
difficult. Or you have chance to organise event related to one main product,
which has very strong community in region or you will organise event for
limited community.
To attract public servant etc, you need minimally some important global
developers. So I think, that some semiregional events has sense.
The true is that it will compete with global event, but on other side is
question, how much. I think, that if there will be good and well organised
global event, that it will also attract people.
You are true, that most of products has origin in NA and so it is not so
attractive for NA developers to come to global event coming outside. But as
I already suggest, if global event will rotate, it will be best compromise
to organise global events together with semi regional event in region
Karel

-----Original Message-----
From: conference_dev-bounces at lists.osgeo.org
[mailto:conference_dev-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Volker Mische
Sent: Monday, June 18, 2012 2:44 PM
To: Jachym Cepicky
Cc: discuss at lists.osgeo.org; Maria Brovelli; conference; Dimitris Kotzinos
Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Conf] [OSGeo-Discuss] regional conferences

Hi,

thanks Jachym for bringing up the smei-regional events. My preference lies
towards having one global event a year and also *real* regional events, but
no semi-regional events. Before I come to more details about what I think a
real regional event is, I'd like to state that I think FOSS4G-CEE is real
regional event, FOSS4G-NA is a semi-regional.

What I understand under real regional events (they are not sorted by any
priority, I just give them numbers for later reference):
 1. In the language of the chapter if that's possible. FOSSGIS (Germany),
GFOSS (Italy), the conf (currently only a day) from OSGeo.nl
(Netherlads) are examples. FOSS4G-CEE is an exception, there's no common
language in the area, hence it's in English.
 2. Attracting people from the region. At least at the FOSSGIS the audience
it quite different from the global FOSS4G. The FOSSGIS attracts more
governmental people and end users. There are even talks about people using
the software for their work (I find them boring, as I'm a dev, but I think
it is interesting for a lot of people).
 3. You can hardly tell your boss to send you to the regional event, except
you are from this region.

How's that different from a semi-regional event. Point (2) is the most
important one for me here. If there is an NA event (and a potential EU one),
it will attract more people, but at what price? I think you can't tell your
boss that you need to go to a global and to a NA (resp. EU) event + a
regional one. So you would need to chose between the global and the
semi-regional one, which would make both of them a bit smaller.

My solution for this problem is: Don't do semi-regional events. The
FOSS4G-NA just spans a way too big region. Many, if not even the majority of
the Open Source geospatial development happens in the US and Canada. You
will attract people from abroad as so many of the major players will be
there. Just do real regional events instead. Do e.g. a California one. The
local chapter is quite huge (I gave a talk there a year ago, and there were
about 100 RSVP). Do this on several places in NA (e.g. a Midwest one).

Cheers,
  Volker

On 06/18/2012 01:54 PM, Jachym Cepicky wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> not sure, if this proposal is the best for the scope of FOSS4G.
> 
> As I already wrote in one of previous mails, we have to try to find 
> the balance between global, semi-regional (approx. continent level) 
> and regional (GFOSS, FOSSGIS, ...) events.
> 
> Another working (not sure, if better) model could be:
> 
> * Global event as it is - every year
> * Semi-Regional events (NA, E, Asia, ...) - every year too, of course 
> not on the continent, where the global event is going be organized
> * Regional events (GFOSS, FOSSGIS, Geoinformatics, ...) every year but 
> in e.g. spring
> 
> Having global event every second year means implies, that OSGeo 
> meeting will take place only every second year? And what about people, 
> who would like to meet other people, but for some reason (usually 
> financial) are not able to travel to other part of the world?
> 
> Any opinion to this?
> 
> Jachym
> 
> Dne 16.6.2012 13:42, Maria Brovelli napsal(a):
>> +1. I will be happy to help Greek friends in organizing the meeting. 
>> +Anyway
>> I'm wondering if sooner or later is possible to organize a 
>> Mediterranean conference....
>> Maria
>>
>> 2012/6/15 Dimitris Kotzinos <kotzino at csd.uoc.gr>
>>
>>> Dear all,
>>>
>>> I saw with great pleasure the call for organizing the 1st Latin 
>>> America FOSS4G conference.
>>> Congrats to the friends there and let me add my offer to help in any 
>>> possible way to those who preceded me.
>>>
>>> The purpose of my e-mail though is a bit different. Taking into 
>>> account the fact the this year we had the North America regional 
>>> conference, the central European regional conference and now the 
>>> Latin America Regional Conference I feel that it is due time to move 
>>> to a mixed scheme of an international and regional conferences.
>>>
>>> Thus I propose that we have the odd years (starting from 2013) ONLY 
>>> the international event (our very successful FOSS4G conference) and 
>>> the even years (starting from 2014) ONLY the regional conferences.
>>> Being in a world in crisis where funding for travel becomes more 
>>> difficult and where people cannot participate in too many 
>>> conferences in a year I feel that this is an acceptable compromise.
>>> So I call upon the board to decide on this proposal and, of course, 
>>> all of you to argue in favor :) or against!
>>>
>>> One final note for the European participation on this list: I 
>>> suggest that we start organizing a regional European level FOSS4G 
>>> (if there is agreement also integrating in it the Central-Eastern 
>>> Europe event) starting from 2014. I volunteer Greece to host the 
>>> first such event (OK, given that things in Greece will not turn out too
bad :)).
>>> If there is an initial agreement we can organize things a bit more.
>>>
>>> Thanks for the consideration of both proposals,
>>>
>>> Dimitris Kotzinos
>>> ______________________________**_________________
>>> Discuss mailing list
>>> Discuss at lists.osgeo.org
>>> http://lists.osgeo.org/**mailman/listinfo/discuss<http://lists.osgeo
>>> .org/mailman/listinfo/discuss>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
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> 
> 
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