[OSGeo-Conf] FOSS4G Handbook - Financial expectations

[Cameron Shorter]

Hi Venka,

Thanks for suggesting specific ideas to implement.

For this email thread, I'd like to focus on your suggestions related to 
financial expectations, so we can take it through to resolution. Namely, 
your item 5. Defining how profit should be returned to OSGeo.

I suggest it is safer to define budget returned to OSGeo as a percentage 
of profit. As profit closely aligns with number of attendees, profit 
will be larger for larger events. Europe and US have historically 
attracted larger attendance than "Rest of World" and hence will return 
larger profit. As such, OSGeo should expect to earn less in "Rest of 
World" years.

I thought the RFP defined an expected budget to be returned to OSGeo 
under conservative estimates, but I can't find reference to it. (Maybe 
someone else can point to it).

For management of special interest programs and sponsorship, I suggest 
refer to the email thread "FOSS4G Simplicity" started by Eli Adam, 
suggesting the be coordinated outside of the FOSS4G LOC (Like the 
academic track).

On 9/09/2016 10:03 AM, Venkatesh Raghavan wrote:
> My Comments inline.
>
> On 9/9/2016 7:40 AM, Steven Feldman wrote:
>> Maria
>>
>> Nice image, what are you suggesting in terms of the RfP? ______
>> Steven
>>
>>
>>> On 8 Sep 2016, at 22:03, Maria Antonia Brovelli
>>> <maria.brovelli at polimi.it> wrote:
>>>
>>> <equity.jpg>
>>>
>>> Dear Cameron I prefer to take into account the differences among
>>> countries. We want to elicit people developing and using open
>>> source and we want to walk all together toward this result.
>>> Equality often is not the best choice. Best regards Maria
>
> +1 for Maria's suggestion.
>
> I would suggest the following;
>
> 1) There was some comment on issue of too many people
> requesting for free conference passes.
> We need to clearly decide a guideline for offering free passes.
> Free passes only offered to main Workshop Trainer, Keynote speakers and
> student volunteers? Apart from that *no one* gets a free pass.
>
> 2) continue the discounted conference fee model for
> low-income countries. This model has been successfully
> used in FOSS4G-2015
>
> 3) Offer Travel support only for participants who are
> have their presentation accepted at the FOSS4G conference.
>
> 4) Are we considering live streaming in future FOSS4G events?
> In that case, request local chapters to organize local "FOSS4GFest"
> during the duration of the main FOSS4G Conference and
> take advantage of watching the live-streaming along with
> the local community members who are unable to physically make it
> to the FOSS4G event.
>
> 5) Consider recommending LoC to return a minimum fixed amount
> of profit to OSGeo. Taking into account, that OSGeo annual
> budget for 2015 is $75,000, we could consider having $50K-$60K
> returned from the profit to OSGeo foundation when FOSS4G is
> organized in high-income countries and $25K-$30K when FOSS4G
> is organized in low-income countries (they can retain part of
> the profit for organizing events to grow local communities, but
> should submit a budget report in subsequent FOSS4G conferences
> as to how the profits were used). This will help the foundation to 
> sustain the "Travel Grant", "Student Award" and "Code Sprint" at
> FOSS4G events.
>
> 6) If the LoC of FOSS4G event is able to generate more profit
> that stated in item 5 above, let them have a say in planning
> how such "extra" profit will be used in future.
>
> 7) Consider a upper cap on the conference registration fee.
> I would suggest $100/day of conference event when organized
> in high-income countries. This would be much lower when FOSS4G
> is organized in a low-income country
>
> Best
>
> Venka
>
>
>
>>>
>>>
>>> Sent from my Samsung device
>>>
>>>
>>> -------- Original message -------- From: Cameron Shorter
>>> <cameron.shorter at gmail.com> Date: 08/09/2016 22:53 (GMT+01:00) To:
>>> conference <conference_dev at lists.osgeo.org> Subject: Re:
>>> [OSGeo-Conf] FOSS4G Handbook - Financial expectations
>>>
>>> Ok, lets start working through Steven's list one item at a time,
>>> starting a new email thread for each.
>>>
>>> Once we have resolution (probably concluding with a vote) we can
>>> finalise it in the foss4g handbook.
>>>
>>>
>>> On 8/09/2016 9:12 PM, Steven Feldman wrote:
>>>>> 1) Overall financial expectations re surplus and sharing of
>>>>> surplus with OSGeo - possibly setting slightly different
>>>>> expectations for RoW to NA & EU
>>>
>>> We have draft principles on Finances in the handbook here:
>>> https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G_Handbook#Finances
>>> <https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G_Handbook#Finances>
>>>
>>> I suggest using this existing text as the basis for guidance. I
>>> personally think it has the right principles in place. In
>>> particular, it is recommending each conference aim to hand over a
>>> fixed percentage of profits as surplus to OSGeo. 85% is suggested.
>>> I prefer this advise over the suggestion that low income countries
>>>  retain more profit.
>>>
>>> -- Cameron Shorter M +61 419 142 254
>>>
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>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
>>
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-- 
Cameron Shorter
M +61 419 142 254