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

Mon Jun 18 06:25:37 PDT 2012

Hey Volker,

personally I don't think this "denial" approach will work. FOSS4G-NA has already happened, and it will continue to happen, at the same scale or maybe even larger (preparation time was very short).

IMHO any event that promotes free and open source for geospatial is a good thing, even if this is at the expense of the meeting of the tribes. That should not be our main focus, even though for me that is the main reason to attend.

Best regards,
Bart

-- 
Bart van den Eijnden
OSGIS - http://osgis.nl

On Jun 18, 2012, at 2:44 PM, Volker Mische wrote:

> 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
>>>> ______________________________**_________________
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>>>> Discuss at lists.osgeo.org
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>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
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>> 
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