[OSGeo-Conf] FOSS4G-Halifax 2020 Answers: Till

[Jeff McKenna]

Dear Till,

We have strategically included an energetic OSGeo member on our 
FOSS4G-HFX team from Mexico, Vicky Vergara, and during a few of our 
local committee meetings over the past few months she has reminded us 
again and again that what may seem to be an acceptable price or plan for 
one community, is far from affordable in the other parts of the world; 
if our mission indeed involves getting all of the world family together, 
leaving out those who cannot afford the event’s expenses fails to meet 
our team’s goals.  At one of our recent local committee meetings we 
spoke about ideas to encourage this participation, credit here to Jérôme 
with an idea from the OSGeo Ottawa chapter, as well as an idea from 
Dmitry from the OpenStreetMap community.

We have also been working as a team to try to get as many accurate known 
cost estimates as we can, in order to give a better financial picture of 
our actual budget, so we can experiment with different scenarios to 
encourage more participation; last week we began working on another 
quote from a third audio/visual company.  As you said, this is not easy. 
  But we can try to be as prepared as possible.

We can also try to go as local committee members to as many FOSS4G 
global and regional events all around the world, and/or talk to OSGeo 
local chapter members from areas of the world that might not be able to 
afford the event, and listen, and do more listening, and take that 
information back to the FOSS4G-HFX team for discussion & planning.

Related to budget and possible scenarios for more participation is of 
course sponsorship; we have also begun to engage local potential 
sponsors, and to compile industry-wide contacts for this.  All of this 
has to be in motion now, as our FOSS4G-HFX team realizes that the 
possible winner of this bid has only 6 months to prepare before 
registration would begin for FOSS4G-2020 (ok it is about 7 months, but 
it is still soon).

We look forward to hopefully explaining our plans more in the final 
proposal stage.

We are committed to do everything we can to make FOSS4G-HFX open to all 
OSGeo family members, from all over the world.  One family.

Thank you,

-Karine Jean & Jeff McKenna
co-chairs, FOSS4G-HFX 2020