[OSGeo-Conf] FOSS4G organizing

Wed Jan 12 10:17:26 PST 2022

Hi conference list,

Maria, thanks for the initial thoughtful blog post and the followup email
below.  I agree with almost all that you've written.  You hit on some great
points that I think our committee should at some point address.

On Wed, Jan 12, 2022 at 7:37 AM María Arias de Reyna via Discuss <
discuss at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> This is my personal opinion as co-chair of FOSS4G 2021 and not any
> official OSGeo statement. Take it with a grain of salt. I am still
> recovering from the burnout of organizing it, so I may be very biased
> :)
>

That more or less sounds like most previous chairs from the last ten
years.  So FOSS4G has gotten more elaborate and established over the
years.  FOSS4G is not a casual get together or just a lark to see if it can
work.  You and others who have brought these spectacular events to fruition
know what it takes.  It takes a lot.  It takes a lot out of you.  If we are
concerned about sustainability (like the event continuing to happen), then
we should really look at ways to change some of the organizing.  This topic
has come up on this list many times (I appear to be too lazy to dig up all
the archives) but we haven't taken action (all talk).  I'm not sure if that
is because we lack consensus or some of us know and have experienced the
effort needed and are now smarter than doing something like that.

>
> On Wed, Jan 12, 2022 at 3:42 PM Jonathan Moules via Discuss
> <discuss at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:
> > Why? If it can be held in a virtual format then surely that's better
> > than an in-person event?
>
> Better is a subjective term. It is better in some aspects, it is worse
> in some others. When we changed FOSS4G 2021 to the online version, we
> researched as much as we could about how to do it properly. And though
> I still need to write a second part post-event of this post[1] it
> summarized concerns that are really not fully solved in an online
> event. Most of the points stated there still stand.
>
> I would advocate to have both, online and face to face, maybe on
> alternate years, maybe adding as a "fourth" option on the rotation.
> Online is good, but in my opinion, it can't replace all in person
> events. And that hurts to say.
>

This "fourth" year rotation is really the only good idea I've seen in this
space.  Since more than ten years ago, FOSS4G has been an early adopter of
recording videos and live streaming (both at considerable expense).  This
is the original hybrid and expanding reach approach and will continue.

>
> > Online is more accessible,
>
> Depends on how you measure accessible.
>
> Not everybody has the network bandwidth or hardware to attend an
> online event, to name the most obvious one. But they may take a train
> or bus and go to the venue.
>
> And don't let me start with streaming services that ban certain
> countries. Because for example if you are streaming from USA, there
> are several countries that can't watch it. Period. By law. Safest
> place to stream from is Europe, which usually adds up to the bill. Or
> you stream from several locations, which adds complexity.
>
> What about communicating in a foreign language with all the body
> language missing? Not everyone is fluent in English. But when you are
> physically there, you can read clues on body language and you can use
> other methods to complement the English you are not fully
> understanding. That's missing on online events. May be minor to native
> speakers, but it makes the event less accessible to some people.
>
> Timezones are a nightmare too. Many people can travel and adapt to the
> timezone of the venue, but if you don't travel, some people find it
> hard to adapt to the timezone. Imagine you live with kids. Are you
> going to stay awake and sleep during the day without that affecting
> either you or them? It can be done, but saying "more accessible" as a
> blank statement is subjective. It has its difficulties.
>
> I agree that depending on the venue (is it accessible to wheelchairs?
> does the catering have allergy options? can you reach it walking or on
> public transport?) or the country chosen (can you get a VISA or are
> you in danger for being LGBTQ+?), it may be better to do it online,
> sure thing. But you have to go case by case. No generalizations here.
>
> > cheaper,
>
> This really depends on how good you want your event to be. You can
> have a free event (on Twitch or YouTube and expect ads in between
> talks) or you can pay for a good platform that offers services useful
> to make the conference better. How many of these services do you want?
> Did you like the social map from 2021? Was it too much? Do you want to
> have private video chats? What else can you add? Maybe some virtual
> reality room for the gala dinner?
>
> We ended up having a good price for all of this, but at a cost of a
> lot of volunteering work. Exhausting volunteering work that wouldn't
> have been required on a face to face version.
>
> > and the
> > massive environmental impact of several hundred people flying to an
> > arbitrary point on the globe
>
> With this I agree 100%.
>
> > Now is a good opportunity to re-evaluate the need for it to be in-person
> > given the evident success of 2021's online event.
> >
> >
> > It strikes me that online has numerous advantages:
> >
> > * Cheaper to attend
>
> Usually true (and true in our case), but I wouldn't count on that as
> another generalization without looking at close numbers.
>
> > * Cheaper to organise
>
> This depends a lot on where you organize it face to face and how you
> organize it online.
>
> > * Easier to organise (? a supposition)
>
> Well, I have found the online version much much much harder to
> organize than similar conferences in person. Just because on the
> online version there is absolutely no room to improvise, you have to
> have everything completely tied before the event. And have a backup
> plan. And a backup plan for the backup plan. And then maybe a third
> backup plan. And then during the event you will run out of backup
> plans and your only choice will be to shrug very hard.
>
> The moderator is missing because whatever personal issues.
> F2F: Anyone else in the room can act as moderator
> Online: Who has privileges to be a moderator in this room? Anyone?
> Someone? Are all the backup moderators busy somewhere else? How many
> rooms are on fire right now? Who can we speed up and teach how the
> controls work in less than five minutes?
>
> I want to thank again the amazing work of the horde of volunteers that
> moderated this 2021. And even when they were a huge amazing group and
> did their best, and we had a huge pool of backups, there were many
> issues. I ended up moderating a room and believe me when I say, that
> was the backup elevated to ten plan at least. Did one room more fail
> at the same time and we would have had to cancel one of the rooms.
>
> This person forgot to buy the right ticket/don't have a ticket/don't
> know how to login to the platform and can't access the room they
> should be in.
> F2F: Open the door.
> Online: Oh, damn, let me find someone with admin privileges so you can
> access.
>
> Because, you know, your group of people with admin privileges will be
> busy taking care of fires somewhere else.
>
> Does the mic fail?
> F2F: Speak louder while someone runs to grab another mic.
> Online: Well, skip the talk, whatever.
>
> Your streaming service is down. This happens, In 2021 I moderated two
> conferences with this issue. Bye bye AWS for several hours.
> F2F: We will upload the recordings later. No worries.
> Online: Oh, our backup streaming service runs also on AWS? Well, skip
> the conference, whatever. See you next year. Such fun!
>
> Or maybe the speaker lose the network at the worst possible time or
> the bandwidth fails or they didn't do as requested and didn't check
> their hardware and software was working,... And there's nothing you
> can do about it except cancel the talk.
>
> > * Open to many more delegates (several billion)
>
> I like your enthusiasm, but we don't have that many potential
> attendees :) I seriously think we reached close to our real potential
> in 2021 which was around 1900 attendees (after removing duplicated
> accounts). Maybe we can get to 3000 or 4000 on a good year, but not
> much more.
>
> > * Open to many more disadvantaged delegates
>
> While leaving others out... So better to alternate so people can go at
> least to one event every N years.
>
> > * Much lower environmental impact
>
> So true. This stands high up.
>
>
This paragraph is spot on:

> The TL;DR version of this would be that if you think online is better,
> please send your proposal for an online version. But without all the
> previous email that may sound rude or aggressive. It is not. I would
> really like to have at least one online option available to choose
> from.
>
> Cheers,
> María.
>

And Barry's similar comment too:

On Wed, Jan 12, 2022 at 7:52 AM Barry Rowlingson via Discuss <
discuss at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:

> I think if a group of individuals[1], or several groups, want to put
> forward proposals for the conference to be located in "Cyberspace"[2] then
> that should not be disallowed, and then its up to the conference committee
> to consider it fairly according to the criteria for selection.
>
> Barry
>
> [1] Not me
> [2] But not "the metaverse". Just No.
>

All ideas are potentially good ideas but the ideas that people are
realistically proposing doing themselves rather than telling other people
to do it are usually better ideas more likely to get support.   A good
proposal by reliable people with relevant experience will get a fair vote.
That bid may even be favored if the LOC organizes early and works to insert
a fourth year rotation before our bidding timeline otherwise comes up.  We
have not yet seen that proposal (2021 Bueno Aires is the closest we've seen
and I defer to and note all that Maria had to say about the details of
that).  The virtual discussion can be a distraction, when a good proposal
by reliable people with relevant experience arrives, it will get
somewhere.  The relevant discussion is "FOSS4G organizing."

Quoting the beginning of this email to get us back to that topic:

On Wed, Jan 12, 2022 at 7:37 AM María Arias de Reyna via Discuss <
discuss at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> This is my personal opinion as co-chair of FOSS4G 2021 and not any
> official OSGeo statement. Take it with a grain of salt. I am still
> recovering from the burnout of organizing it, so I may be very biased
> :)
>

That more or less sounds like most previous chairs from the last ten
years.  So FOSS4G has gotten more elaborate and established over the
years.  FOSS4G is not a casual get together or just a lark to see if it can
work.  You and others who have brought these spectacular events to fruition
know what it takes.  It takes a lot.  It takes a lot out of you.  If we are
concerned about sustainability (like the event continuing to happen), then
we should really look at ways to change some of the organizing.  This topic
has come up on this list many times (I appear to be too lazy to dig up all
the archives) but we haven't taken action (all talk).  I'm not sure if that
is because we lack consensus or some of us know and have experienced the
effort needed and are now smarter than doing something like that.

Do we want to change this?  Do we want to keep the new LOC starting from
scratch every year model?  Do we want to talk about it and do nothing?  Are
we done talking about it and I should let it go?

Best regards, Eli

>
>
> [1] https://delawen.com/2020/10/are-online-events-the-new-normal/
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss at lists.osgeo.org
> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>
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