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

Thu Jun 14 13:01:56 PDT 2018

I too would like to see the books published.

There will be (hopefully) an NA LOC budgeting their event shortly, and
knowing the books from previous events (prior years would be nice
too!) would, as always, be immensely helpful to them.

If LocationTech is not going to do it, they can just come out and say
so, and that will be that, we don't have any standing to demand they
open them post facto if they never intended to. In the meanwhile, it's
strange to be in this intermediate liminal state, where on the one
hand the books are open in principle but on the other they are not in
practice.

P.

On Thu, Jun 14, 2018 at 11:23 AM, Sara <sara at sarasafavi.com> wrote:
> 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
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Conference_dev mailing list
>>> Conference_dev at lists.osgeo.org
>>> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/conference_dev
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Michael Terner
>> ternergeo at gmail.com
>> (M) 978-631-6602
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Conference_dev mailing list
>> Conference_dev at lists.osgeo.org
>> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/conference_dev
>>
>>
>> --
>> Cameron Shorter
>> Technology Demystifier
>> Open Technologies and Geospatial Consultant
>>
>> M +61 (0) 419 142 254
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Conference_dev mailing list
> Conference_dev at lists.osgeo.org
> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/conference_dev