[OSGeo-Conf] Mailchimp

[Eli Adam]

I have some hesitancy to ever be in the situation of "we can't send
emails to our list" which could happen if we plan to migrate later (or
even, unarchive  later).  If there is some reliable method to increase
and decrease expense that doesn't conflict with other uses of that
function, that might be worthwhile if some individual wants to
reliably take that on.  Do we know when FOSS4G 2021 wants to start
sending messages?

I'm also open to evaluating options like https://phplist.com/pricing
if it were found to be equivalent (or better) and would support open
source software while doing it.  Generally, I think there is some
value to stability in things like this and we shouldn't be changing
too frequently.  Any change should be done in coordination with a LOC
(or if it were to be part of a more centrally managed service by the
Conference Committee).

For straight cost, +1 to what Darrell and Mark said.  This cost is
minor in the big picture.  Generally sysadmin time is one of the more
scarce resources around OSGeo and I think that is best reserved for
other functions that can't easily be done otherwise/elsewhere.  We
would need to talk to SAC before shifting responsibility of FOSS4G
emails going through correctly on tight timelines to them.

More generally, evaluating which tasks are managed centrally by the
Conference Committee and which are shuffled from LOC to LOC might be
worth a larger conversation (maybe on some other thread).

Best regards, Eli

On Fri, May 15, 2020 at 9:34 AM Darrell fuhriman <darrell at garnix.org> wrote:
>
> My general feeling on these things is that it’s worth the money to not put any more burden on volunteers than is necessary — especially if that burden can be easily outsourced for what is frankly a pretty small charge in the grand scheme of things.
>
> If you can revert to free and then upgrade as necessary, that seems like an excellent investment to me.
>
> Darrell
>
> > On May 15, 2020, at 08:52, María Arias de Reyna <delawen at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Dear Conference Committee,
> >
> > We just had a meeting with the Calgary team to give us the credentials
> > of the shared accounts by all LOCs.
> >
> > We have a question regarding MailChimp. We understand this is an
> > interesting tool that has been widely used in the past. Right now it
> > has a cost of 93€/month.
> >
> > Considering we are not going to widely use it in the next few months,
> > we are going to export all the contacts to convert it to a free plan
> > for the time being and then decide at a later stage what to do with
> > it. Possibly reimport all the contacts and pay again, if there is no
> > better alternative.
> >
> > Can the Conference Committee discuss to have some FOSS version of
> > this, like PHPList (https://github.com/phpList/phplist3 ), on OSGeo
> > servers that will allow us to do the same without depending on an
> > external provider?
> >
> > Cheers,
> > María.
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