[OSGeo-Conf] Mailchimp

[Eli Adam]

On Sat, May 16, 2020 at 2:48 AM María Arias de Reyna <delawen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Sat, May 16, 2020 at 11:35 AM María Arias de Reyna <delawen at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > >How many contacts do we have?
> >
> > Slightly above 8300 contacts right now. Once we reach 10.000 it looks
> > like the price goes up to 230€/month, if I understood it correctly.
>
> Big fat fingers: it is 280€/month.
>
> I think this also somehow links to the idea of having a software stack
> for conferences that is shared not only among international FOSS4G but
> also with regional and local events. We are already working on
> adapting and deploying a  Pretix/Pretalx/Eventfahr/... which should
> cover everything a FOSS4G needs for selling tickets, C4P, mobile app
> and such.
>
> Once we "own" it and know our way around it, the idea was to propose
> to have OSGeo hosting it (with our LOC doing at least the initial
> deployment) so it is a stable software stack to use:
> https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/local-chapters/2019-September/000157.html

A great discussion and the LOC is where things get started!  The way I
see something like that actually working is for one LOC to start one
aspect and then follow through to subsequent LOCs to successfully
institutionalize it.  If something like this can be built up and
established and have enough participation and support, then it can
really work.  It sounds promising.  Paul cautioned about some of the
risks or difficulty that might be encountered going forward (this
coming from the person who wrote some of the program voting scripts in
2007 that are sometimes still in use today).

We have seen that establishment and institutionalization happen with
the Travel Grant Program.  It started out in Nottingham 2013 (or
earlier?) with Travel Bursaries.  PDX 2014 greatly extended,
formalized, and worked to institutionalize it.  Subsequent years
continued it very well as part of the normal baseline.  Dar Es Salaam
2018 taught us all about bringing in more money for this and spending
more on it; really in an impressive way and scale!  Much of this has
happened through sustained support of Steven (and probably others I'm
missing) and individual efforts from separate LOCS (Kristin in 2014
and Mark and Alyssa in 2018 come to mind).  Right now the TGP is at a
point of transition, Steven is looking to pass his leadership,
continuity, and knowledge on to someone else,
https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/conference_dev/2020-February/005454.html.
This will be the true test of the TGP which has been so popular and
successful for 7+ years.  I'm excited and hopeful that a new group of
people enthusiastically continue and improve this into the future
taking it beyond where the initial group of implementers envisioned.

On a personal note, the TGP institutionalization and continued success
is one of my proudest legacies from 2014.  Although the credit for
much of that on the 2014 LOC goes to Kristin for having the vision and
leadership and Darrell for having the courage to do it.  I personally
was afraid (of some of the financial aspects) and not that big of a
supporter of the (scale of the) 2014 TGP.  With long time involvement
with OSGeo, knowledge of how the committees and Board work, and other
aspects I was able to play a role in the institutionalization (I think
Till helped a lot here too).  As already mentioned, Steven did a lot
to build the momentum from year to year and keep things running
smoothly.

A successful software stack for conferences and greater
institutionalization of other aspects of the conferences could be a
beneficial improvement as well.

Best regards, Eli

>
> On this initial stack we didn't consider an alternative for mailchimp,
> mostly because we weren't aware of how big it was become :)
>
> About GDPR, all the software chosen is GDPR compliant. We just have to
> take care of not migrating data from one country to another without
> prior notice and not adding data without previous consent. Which is
> something current SAC should be already doing with things like the
> OSGeo LDAP accounts.