[OSGeo-Conf] some decisions in the pipe

[Till Adams]

Hi Conference comittee,

this is a general reminder on some decisions/discussions, that I have on
my list we have to talk about in the following weeks. This email serves
just as a general list-up with the hope, that you'll find some time to
think about some of my issues. If you have your own things to bring in,
feel free to share!

I will list these points as seperate issues below and would be happy if
we start a discussion:

1. Voting Members

For the last RfP, where we nominated Bucharest as venue for the 2019
conference, we had a weak quorum, because quite some members did not
vote. I sent out personal emails to the non-voters and received feedback
from 3 of the 5 non-voters. These 3 excused themselves, they had reasons
and they are willing to stay on board and that makes me happy.

Leads me to the question, that I still did not get any feedback from the
other 2. Now it's already some weeks ago that I contacted them,
including a remembering mail.
I don't know if we have an official trial to rule out people and
personnally I wouldn't like to do that, because I know at least one of
the 2 personally.
On the other side, we can't be sure, that they will appear back once
upon a time. Not re-appearing means that we have to fear more weak
quorums in the future.

Issue 1: How do we act here?

This directly leads me to question 2: I will nominate Guido Stein and
Michael Terner as new members for the CC later. I think as former chairs
of a successful global FOSS4G conference, it is without question clear,
that we need them as new members in CC. Also there was a request of
Gerald Fenoy back this summer, where he asked for participation as member.
I am little unsure here, because I fear, that we will have a huge CC
within a few years, when we also nominate all past chairs of regional
events. In my eyes (without rating!!!) organizing a regional event is a
cmletely different game than having a global FOSS4G. And our job is to
vote on proposals for global conferences venues. On the other side, of
course, having some more active members inside CC wouldn't be the badest
idea.

Issue 2: Accept nomination of Gerald Fenoy (and potential other regional
chairs?) ?


2. Voting process
We discussed to alter the voting process, so that for step 1 (LOI
acceptance) of the RfP 2019 we had this new "thumbs up"/"thumbs down"
vote. I will soon call for a vote, whether we want to keep this
procedure or go back to the old "one vote per member" also for step 1.
 

3. Bid process
I do not know, how you felt in the last RfP. I had problems in comparing
the two proposals, because one of them was very close to the draft we
gave out and the Sevilla one was, let's say, "freely interpreted" ;-).
I don't want to limit the teams' individual imagination, but perhaps it
would be easier for comparing the proposals, if all proposals would have
the same agenda. This also would save the teams from spending money on a
marketing agency for layout things (I do not want to impute, that this
happened in 2019, but this *might* happen in the future in order to put
one proposal in a better light). I wil call for a vote on this issue
soon as well.


So far, have a nice day!

Till