[OSGeo-Conf] FOSS4G Discount for Charter Members proposal
Bart van den Eijnden
bartvde at osgis.nl
Tue Aug 26 04:46:17 PDT 2014
Hey Andrew,
(my response is a personal response, not a board response).
First off I’d like to thank you for the kind offer of working together. I want to make sure we discuss this at the board level and hopefully come to some consensus on this.
Personally I am very interested to see what this collaboration could bring both parties.
Best regards,
Bart
On 15 Aug 2014, at 05:51, Andrew Ross <andrew.ross at eclipse.org> wrote:
> Hey Jeff, Everyone
>
> I'd like to comment briefly.
>
> I feel a 800+ person conference is of a sufficient size that it's not a good idea to burn out volunteers organizing. To throw a new team to the wolves each year is extremely risky.
>
> The obvious options are to not have such a large event, or choose a different model to organize.
>
> I feel that a conference of such size is very important. It's what draws the ecosystem together and helps it grow. Not having the large event would be a loss.
>
> It is simply too big to hold at most Universities, and especially in the fall.
>
> For what it's worth, I also feel smaller regional and plenty of local events are important too. That's orthogonal to the global event though.
>
> I've been open about what the Eclipse Foundation & LocationTech can do. It has full time staff with experience to run a consistently great technology conferences with lots of camaraderie.
>
> Let's work together. FOSS4G NA 2015 will be a nice opportunity, test, and display. For those who are highly motivated, feel free to go back to the D.C. bid and provide feedback. I feel it was a great bid, credible, and a good indication of the kind of event we'd hold in the future. Maybe this is a good option to address many of the issues? Worth exploring a bit in any case.
>
> Andrew
>
>
> On August 14, 2014 9:54:49 AM EDT, Jeff McKenna <jmckenna at gatewaygeomatics.com> wrote:
> Hi Darrell,
>
> I can say that in 2011 I did bring this issue strongly, and very
> publicly, to the OSGeo Board. I even proposed a part-time position to
> manage the main FOSS4G conference (google 'foss4g advisor' for some
> history and fun reading, all there outlined in a public wiki page forever).
>
> Well, that didn't happen. And as you just mentioned, it's still needed.
>
> Or, if that cannot happen, we need to realize this, and change our
> mindset, back to the origins of FOSS4G: a meeting of the tribe, cheap
> admission, affordable university venues, bare-bones (essentially what
> our FOSS4G regional events are doing now).
>
> Because yes I agree, to assume a bunch of volunteers can run a ~1,000
> attendee event in the best conference venue in the city and still make
> it affordable for the tribe to attend, will not work.
>
> -jeff
>
>
>
>
> On 2014-08-14 12:10 AM,
> Darrell Fuhriman wrote:
> I’m trying to formulate a response to this, but it ties into an e-mail
> that I owe this list, but haven’t had time to send because I’ve been
> busy finalizing the conference preparations. Also, I’m well into my
> third pint this evening, so it’s probably not the best time. :)
>
> While I agree the early bird discount is important for the reasons you
> state, there actually aren’t that many commitments that can be avoided
> after the deadline. Frankly, the only significant contracts unsigned by
> our early bird deadline of June 15th were the catering contracts. Though
> admittedly, that’s a substantial portion of the budget – if we were on
> that red line, we’d be jettisoning coffee breaks like ballast in a
> sinking ship.
>
> I think right now the quickest thing I
> can say is that OSGeo has so far
> shown minimal interest in actually taking responsibility for FOSS4G. If
> OSGeo is going to increase the demands made on the committee, OSGeo
> needs to be stepping up and taking a more hands-on approach to
> conference organization.
>
> For the record, I believe OSGeo needs to step up and take such a more
> hands on approach. I’d love a chance to talk about in person at the
> board meeting.
>
> SotM.us <http://SotM.us> runs very different, and I know from talking
> with the organizers that it was a challenge to break-even this year. The
> difficulty is that as conferences get bigger, they get more expensive to
> put on (primarily because the supply of possible venues shrinks very
> rapidly, and the per attendee costs go up substantially). They also get
> logistically more challenging, and having dedicated resources,
> either
> employee or outsourced, can vastly decrease the workload on the LOC.
> Frankly, unless something changes on this front, it’s just a matter of
> time until there’s another 2012. To be honest, I’m not sure SotM.us
> <http://SotM.us> would have been a success if Mapbox hadn’t devoted
> significant employee resources to making sure it was (as they have for
> the past three SotM.us <http://SotM.us> conferences). Conferences take
> huge numbers of hours to organize. The inefficiency introduced by having
> someone re-learn the job every year is substantial, wasteful, and
> incredibly risky.
>
> Anyway, I’m supposed to be on vacation.
>
> Greetings from Yellowstone,
>
> Darrell
>
>
> On Aug 13, 2014, at 13:41, Cameron Shorter <cameron.shorter at gmail.com
>
> <mailto:cameron.shorter at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> I'm open to the idea of providing benefits to osgeo charter members,
> but suggest having an early bird discount apply to all ticket
> categories. I'd suggest something like a 5% discount for charter
> member tickets instead.
>
> Note: conferences organisors need to decide whether they will also
> give such a discount to professional bodies as well (such as
> professional institute of surveyors). Such organisations often
> aggressively request a discount for their members in return for
> publicising foss4g to their membership.
>
> There is a very important reason conferences have a early bird
> discount. It means that conference organisors get an early indication
> of the number of attendees coming to the conference. This helps
> significantly with
> regards to making financial decisions about the
> conference. In particular, it enables organisors to decide to cancel
> the conference before having to lock into key financial commitments
> and potentially sending OSGeo bankrupt. This was very important for us
> in FOSS4G 2009, the year of the global financial crisis, when
> registrations were much lower than expected. At the early bird
> deadline, we were aware that we had enough people attending that we
> would loose less money by going ahead than if we cancelled, so we went
> ahead. Without that confidence, we likely would have decided to cancel
> the conference. (In the end more people did register, and we were just
> able to make a modest profit.)
>
> On 14/08/2014 4:56 am, Kate Chapman wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I think the comparison between the SotM model
> and the FOSS4G model is
> interesting, but it is important to think about the financial
> objectives of each conference. My understanding was that FOSS4G
> provides most of the funding for OSGEO over the year, this isn't the
> case for SotM. Though successful sponsorship programs could possibly
> make up the difference between the discounted tickets.
>
> One note, I've worked for a few organizations that have paid my
> ticket for SotM. I've also paid the mapper price myself previously as
> well. I would have not been able to get them to pay for FOSS4G
> though. Some of you may have noticed I have given a workshop every
> year I've attended FOSS4G. I would not be able to attend otherwise.
> Not that it is conceivable for everyone to give a workshop to be able
> to attend.
>
> Best,
>
> -Kate
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 11:46 AM, Daniel Kastl <daniel at georepublic.de
>
> <mailto:daniel at georepublic.de>> wrote:
>
>
> SotM finances are based on the expectation that most people
> attending will be ‘mappers’ who pay the lower rate, I doubt
> they make much money from the business tickets.
>
>
> Hi Steven,
>
> I agree that SotM is a bit extreme in the price difference. It
> doesn't need to be that much. But I can speak for SotM Tokyo,
> where I was involved, and there were more business tickets sold
> than I expected and they made up a large share of the total
> revenue through ticket sales.
>
> My main point is, that for delegates, who get paid the conference
> by their employer, a slightly higher price doesn't really matter
> (it's just a fraction of the total cost anyway), because they
> just pass the costs to the employer. For the employer it has a
> value, if one can see the company name on
> the badge.
> But someone from nearby for example or tries to keep the travel
> costs low and takes a holiday to attend FOSS4G, such a discounted
> community ticket makes a difference, whether the person is a
> charter member or not.
> I think we should strengthen the value of the community, not the
> "club" of charter members. ;-)
>
> Daniel
> --
>
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