[OSGeo-Conf] FOSS4G-NA -- request for financial records

Thu Jun 14 11:23:39 PDT 2018

Hi Cameron, all:

Sure, happy to explain further: my request is for information that
LocationTech already stated publicly was "open", "has always been", and
would be posted to OSGeo's wiki -- to actually be made open and posted to
the wiki. If LocationTech either misspoke, lied, or changed their mind on
that then as a community member/volunteer/sponsor I would like to know why.
I'm not alone in this, either: I'm just today's squeaky wheel. :)

As Steven said:
> I would not expect preparing a schedule of income and expenditure for a
conference to be a lot of effort. The organising team or their PCO must
maintain some schedules to record income and expenditure.

I'm not expecting miracles, but as a community centered around transparency
and openness it seems unusual to not have at least some insight into one of
our larger event's basic financial records. As Mike & Steven both point
out, though not a requirement this is a longstanding community norm for
many FOSS4G events.

Considering the past conversations we've all seen on the distro lists re:
this working group/LOC specifically and transparency, I'm surprised that
one now needs to provide "a worthy motivation" to even pose the question.
Meanwhile off-list I'm getting private messages telling me to "just let
this go". Did I miss a memo or something?

On Wed, Jun 13, 2018 at 10:44 PM, Cameron Shorter <cameron.shorter at gmail.com
> wrote:

> Sara,
>
> I'd suggest it might be helpful to explain why you are requesting people
> open the books. Providing a worthy motivation will likely help inspire a
> volunteer to help you.
>
> There is typically quite a bit of volunteer effort required to pull
> together past data into a usable format. Quite often it requires data to be
> de-personalised for public consumption. Maybe you can say something along
> the lines of "if you release the metrics, then I will be able to add value
> to the osgeo community to help ..."
>
> On 14/6/18 8:20 am, michael terner wrote:
>
> Sara:
> I fully support the notion of "open books" and the Boston Team has
> endeavored to do that. Indeed, when asking volunteers to do so much in this
> ecosystem it is important to have openness around the finances.
>
> This tweet from Matthew Hanson had a picture of the "raw" (and rounded)
> Boston numbers that I presented in a talk at FOSS4GNA in STL:
> https://twitter.com/GeoSkeptic/status/996147340854652928
>
> There's one other slide in that deck that showed the net results (i.e.,
> surplus) and I would be happy to share the entire deck with this list if
> useful. Just ask. (And, we have lots of other more granular data if there
> are other, specific questions [e.g., speaker fees; # of people who were
> early bird; etc.]).
>
> That said, the numbers by themselves don't tell the entire story as there
> is a whole lot of context that matters greatly. Stuff like:
>
>    - Organizers do not know how the numbers will fully add up until a
>    good bit after the conference. Indeed, there are both trailing expenses to
>    pay, and revenue to collect (some of which are dependent on the actual
>    attendance you achieve). And, some accounting/spreadsheet work to do by
>    already tired volunteers.
>    - Conference registrations are slow to pour in. So while Boston
>    ultimately harvested a sizable surplus, we did not know until *2 weeks
>    *before the conference that we had achieved our break-even number. If
>    we knew what our final attendance would be in advance we would have surely
>    lowered our prices and/or better funded the travel grant program. But we,
>    nor any other organizer, has that luxury. We are pleased that some of our
>    surplus is going to support the Dar es Salaam conference through OSGeo
>    *paying* for sponsorship for that event.
>    - Decisions that organizers make greatly impact the finances. Things
>    ranging from providing day care, to giving all speakers a free pass, to the
>    location of the host city, greatly impact costs/revenues while serving
>    other important objectives.
>
> Indeed, it is an imperfect science and the Boston team was petrified by
> our finances up until that "break even" moment 2 weeks before the
> conference started. But it is also the imperfectness of this science that
> makes "opening the books" so important as all future conferences can learn
> from both past triumphs and mistakes. I would never look askance at a set
> of numbers that told a sadder story than Boston's (unless there was abject
> corruption, or something like that). Running a conference is hard and in
> all of the FOSS4G and FOSS4GNA conferences I've volunteered on (which now
> numbers 5, and includes STL) I have never doubted than anyone acted in a
> way other than to deliver the best possible conference at the lowest
> possible cost. I also don't expect that everyone would make the same
> choices that we did in Boston. Indeed, the Chair and his/her LOC make the
> choices they feel will lead to the best/most successful conference. Second
> guessing is a natural impulse, but it easier to do than running the
> conference. And, from my vantage, open books are important as they serve to
> help explain the choices that were made, and the financial impact of those
> choices.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> MT
>
>
> On Wed, Jun 13, 2018 at 1:18 PM Sara <sara at sarasafavi.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi folks,
>>
>> Some of you may be aware that for the past ~5 weeks, I have periodically
>> renewed a public request [0] for FOSS4G-NA 2018's financial records.
>>
>> Yesterday, Marc Vloemans, speaking on behalf of LocationTech, said that I
>> was "misrepresenting" this issue [1]. That's certainly not my intent, so
>> I'd like to clarify the basis for my ongoing request in longform, and renew
>> said request in this forum.
>>
>> - On May 4, 2018, a LocationTech representative stated publicly that
>> FOSS4G-NA's "financials are open, have always been" [2]
>>
>> - Later the same day, the same representative said that they were
>> "working on posting all our materials to the wiki (...) Expect those late
>> this week" [3]
>>
>> - Those statements now appear to be contradicted by the recent comment
>> [1] that "there is no obligation" of LocationTech to share FOSS4G-NA
>> financials
>>
>> My ongoing requests have thus far been an attempt to continue the
>> conversation that originally took place on twitter on May 4th. As Marc said
>> last night that he does not "communicate with people via twitter" [1], I'm
>> more than happy to continue the public conversation with him or any
>> relevant representative(s) here.
>>
>> [0a] https://twitter.com/sarasomewhere/status/1006304174332661760
>> [0b] https://twitter.com/sarasomewhere/status/1001543441053114368
>> [0c] https://twitter.com/sarasomewhere/status/994930635096641536
>> [1] https://i.imgur.com/NlbXb4t.png
>> [2] https://twitter.com/TheaClay/status/992394814749577217
>> [3] https://twitter.com/TheaClay/status/993584128279957504
>>
>> Regards,
>> Sara Safavi
>> _______________________________________________
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>> Conference_dev at lists.osgeo.org
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>
>
>
> --
> Michael Terner
> ternergeo at gmail.com
> (M) 978-631-6602
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
>
> --
> Cameron Shorter
> Technology Demystifier
> Open Technologies and Geospatial Consultant
>
> M +61 (0) 419 142 254
>
>
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