[OSGeo-Conf] Firenze Full Proposal

[María Arias de Reyna]

On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 8:23 AM Luca Delucchi <lucadeluge at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> I fully support this, I wrote a document shared with some members of
> this committee and some of the board, now I share with all of you [0].
> This is my idea, it can be improved and changed, it could be a
> starting point for next call

Regarding some of the ideas of the shared document:

> Provide a system for CfP and Registration (maybe also streaming, a candidate is venueless.org) to be used also by local chapter and related conferences

I completely support this. One of the goals of FOSS4G 2021 is to
experiment with tools we can own and reuse later. Our experiment using
Pretix, Pretalx and Venueless has upsides and downsides... but more
upsides than downsides. And the downsides are things we can easily fix
given proper time. Some of the issues were discovered "on the fly" so
difficult to hotfix in production. But as said, nothing that can't be
fixed for future editions and adapted to our special needs.

I easily foresee I will be burn out when 2021 finishes, but I can help
in deploying/customizing/maintaining that stack in the future (maybe
at least give some hints to 2022 and being more active for 2023?). And
if OSGeo as an entity reach an agreement with the developers behind
those projects, maybe for hosting, maybe for co-developing features, I
think that would be great because our goals are very similar. We are a
perfect testing use case for them.

> The conference will be hybrid.

Here I have serious doubts. It's true that the situation has improved
a bit for online events since I wrote my initial analysis[1] but still
a hybrid event will mean having two types of attendees. I have been
for too long working on semi-remote initiatives to know that it is
always better to be either fully online or fully face to face. Even if
there is a team on the same office that use their own laptop for
meetings to level the field, the moment they start interacting face to
face it means the ones that are remote are in disadvantage. The
frustration of being a remotee and trying to participate in a
conversation from a laptop screen while the rest are talking face to
face is... frustrating. Specially on heated conversations (people tend
to forget you are there) which are one of the most attractive features
of conferences: being able to have heated conversations on
technologies and brainstorm the future.

Unless we have very strongly in mind that remote attendees will be
"readonly" and face to face attendees will be the only ones really
interacting... I don't know, maybe I'm wrong but I still have to find
some way of making the hybrid work. And I have tried for years on
events with people that couldn't travel in person for different
reasons. All of them had this "second class citizen" feeling at the
end, no matter how much love and care we put into making them
comfortable.

The best "hybrid" approach I have seen is a normal FOSS4G pre-2020,
where people travel there but you still have streaming services for
those who couldn't/didn't want to travel. Which means remotees are
"readonly" and they know it from the beginning, no false hopes of
participating.

Cheers and congrats on the proposal, Luca!

[1] https://delawen.com/2020/10/are-online-events-the-new-normal/