[OSGeo-Conf] FOSS4G Auckland 2025 Proposal

Mon May 27 02:33:08 PDT 2024

My concern regarding this proposal is simple: The location. There are 
two pages of the proposal dedicated to "internationally connected" for 
Auckland, and they focus entirely on: Flying. Which makes sense because 
that's the only reasonable way to get to New Zealand, but unfortunately, 
it's utterly unsustainable.

A return trip from Munich (which I'm going to pretend is the "middle" of 
Europe) to Auckland is about 5-10 tons of CO2 assuming economy class 
(difference calculators say different things). Quadruple this for 
Business class. Based on the historical numbers, it looks like you can 
probably expect at least 100 European delegates, so that's 500-1000 
metric tons of CO2 right there. Throw in a hundred west-coast Americans 
(2-4 tons round trip), and that's another 2-500 tons. Though I see your 
expected international attendance from outside Oceania is actually more 
than double this (380), so lets say at least 2000 tons CO2e just from 
the flights.

The IPCC reports are clear that we need to be drastically reducing CO2 
emissions. Carrying on with business-as-usual like this is part of the 
problem and one of the reasons global emissions continue to rise.

I note that you have "Carbon Offset" via trees, at least for attendance, 
though the reality is that these are generally greenwashing exercises.

The online option as an alternative seems problematic for an 
international audience because NZ is ~10hrs ahead of Europe and ~5-8hrs 
behind the Americas.

Japan has similar issues, but at least they have a much larger "local" 
audience, be that within the country (population 123 million), or within 
a short distance away (SE Asia, population: 1 billion+). They're also 
closer for the international audiences, though not by much.

(And for the record: I'd absolutely love to go to NZ, but as I refuse to 
fly for environmental reasons, it's never likely to happen.)

On 2024-05-16 21:12, Simon Nitz via Conference_dev wrote:
>
> Hi María
>
> Thank you so much for taking time to go over our proposal.
>
> The questions you have asked are great and I have added them and our 
> response to the wiki page at…
>
> https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G2025_Q%26A_2_Auckland
>
> Cheers
>
> Simon
>
> *From:*María Arias de Reyna <delawen at gmail.com>
> *Sent:* Friday, 17 May 2024 6:37 AM
> *To:* Simon Nitz <Simon.Nitz at whanganui.govt.nz>
> *Cc:* conference_dev at lists.osgeo.org
> *Subject:* Re: [OSGeo-Conf] FOSS4G Auckland 2025 Proposal
>
> Dear Simon,
>
> I just did a first read of your document and I want to congratulate 
> you and your LOC for such a beautiful proposal.
>
> I see that you consider numbers that I feel are a bit low for 
> attendance (base 550, better 650, best 750). I like that you are 
> conservative and that the budget stays strong with a low number, but I 
> think that we should be prepared for the upper number to be at least 
> 1000, considering the historial data[1]. Is there a reason why 750 is 
> the higher you planned? Because even if it is very far away from me 
> (Spain), I see it is very close to some of the most vibrant 
> communities out there. I know you mention you can expand to more rooms 
> if needed and that you can have a bigger plenary room, I am just 
> curious if I'm missing some reason behind the numbers.
>
> I like the childcare services. As a suggestion: are you also 
> considering offering some tourist package for partners?
>
> Sometimes the codesprint is not of interest for the majority of the 
> audience for several reasons (considered too technical, people are 
> tired at the last day and decide to just do some tourism,...). Do you 
> have any ideas on how to encourage participation?
>
> Cheers!
>
> María.
>
> [1] 
> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ux_hFq-C165140ZD48RRImPTHSpXj42OG3nBr9cyZYo/edit#gid=1782600951
>
> On Sun, May 12, 2024 at 10:36 PM Simon Nitz via Conference_dev 
> <conference_dev at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:
>
>     Dear FOSS4G Conference Committee,
>
>     On behalf of OSGeo Oceania and the Auckland Local Organizing
>     Committee it gives me great pleasure to submit our proposal to
>     host FOSS4G 2025 in Auckland, New Zealand.
>
>     Please find our Proposal document attached to this email.
>
>     Additional documents including budget have been sent to Luca to
>     disseminate to the committee privately.
>
>     Simon Nitz
>
>     Co-Chair for FOSS4G 2025 Auckland Local Organizing Committee
>
>     *Simon Nitz | **GIS Lead*
>     P: +64 349 3052 | M: +64
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