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Forwarding Tim's email to the conference email list, so we have all
comments archived in one place. ...<br>
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Tim, this is good feedback.<br>
<br>
-------- Original Message --------
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<th align="RIGHT" nowrap="nowrap" valign="BASELINE">Subject:
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<td>Re: [Board] Fwd: Analysing the downfall of FOSS4G 2011</td>
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<th align="RIGHT" nowrap="nowrap" valign="BASELINE">Date: </th>
<td>Fri, 17 Aug 2012 18:54:02 +0200</td>
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<th align="RIGHT" nowrap="nowrap" valign="BASELINE">From: </th>
<td>Tim Sutton <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:tim@linfiniti.com"><tim@linfiniti.com></a></td>
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<th align="RIGHT" nowrap="nowrap" valign="BASELINE">To: </th>
<td>Cameron Shorter <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:cameron.shorter@gmail.com"><cameron.shorter@gmail.com></a></td>
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<th align="RIGHT" nowrap="nowrap" valign="BASELINE">CC: </th>
<td>FOSS4G 2012 <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:foss4g2012@lists.osgeo.org"><foss4g2012@lists.osgeo.org></a>,
OSGeo-Board List <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:board@lists.osgeo.org"><board@lists.osgeo.org></a></td>
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Hi<br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 10:14 PM, Cameron
Shorter <span dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:cameron.shorter@gmail.com" target="_blank">cameron.shorter@gmail.com</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"> FYI:<br>
Please send responses to the conference_dev email list (or
to me to forward to the list).<br>
<div><br>
<h3> <span>Website out of date</span></h3>
<p>A conference's website is the primary form of
communication with potential delegates. For FOSS4G 2012,
the website took an excessively long time to be
developed and brought online, and then when it was
brought online, it contained <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/foss4g2012/2012-February/000016.html"
rel="nofollow" target="_blank">incorrect information
and broken links</a> (mainly <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/foss4g2012/2012-March/000018.html"
rel="nofollow" target="_blank">cut and paste from the
prior FOSS4G website</a>). People were having
significant issues with submitting papers and <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/conference_dev/2012-June/001843.html"
rel="nofollow" target="_blank">registering to attend</a>.
</p>
<p>The FOSS4G LOC had hired an external web developer to
create the website, who had done a poor job of
development. It seemed that there was a lack of quality
control from both the web developer, and LOC. In the
past, development of the website has either been managed
by technically experienced developers (as was the case
in 2009), or by the PCO. </p>
<p>The lesson here is that the website needs to be made a
priority and suitably resourced. There is the potential
for website management software to be passed on from one
conference to the next. (We considered this option in
2009 but found the Open Source conference management
software used by FOSS4G 2008 was not going to integrate
easily with the software our PCO was using). It would be
worth future FOSS4G conferences revisiting this
question. </p>
<h3><br>
</h3>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div>One thing that struck me as an obvious place for
improvement when we were organising the CT FOSS4G in 2010 was
the absence of any usable 'out of the box' web infrastructure
from OSGEO for running the conference in particular:</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>- abstract submission</div>
<div>- conference pre-registration and at event registration</div>
<div>- sharing of talk presentation materials</div>
<div>- event planning (e.g. tools like <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.jboss.org/drools/drools-planner/">http://www.jboss.org/drools/drools-planner/</a> coould
be used to optimise the event schedule)</div>
<div>- project management within the loc</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>It seems that in most case the LOC contracts local people
to provide this - in our case IIRC the professional event
organisers we used provided the registration service for
example which I believe contributed to a substantial part of
their fee (Gav correct me if I am wrong here). It strikes me
that the same problem is solved (probably suboptimally) over
again for each conference and it would make conference hosting
substantially easier if these things were in place already
when the LOC convenes. Wouldn't this be a good place for OSGEO
to invest revenue from conferences? Then with each conference
it would be simply a matter of deploying a new 'instance' of
the software suite for the purposes of the conference, theming
the site and being on your way.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Many of the things needed can be provided by open source
software but having them pre-configured (e.g. issue categories
in trac or a conference theme for wordpress with page stubs
and suitable plugins set up etc) by experienced conference
organisers would be an excellent way of batton passing to the
next LOC team.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I think some targetted investement in getting web presence
and conference organisation tools re-usable would
substantially help to ensure the success, and reduce the
overheads of, future events.</div>
<div>
<br>
</div>
<div>Regards</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Tim</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div> </div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">
<pre cols="72">--
Cameron Shorter
Geospatial Solutions Manager
Tel: <a moz-do-not-send="true" href="tel:%2B61%20%280%292%208570%205050" value="+61285705050" target="_blank">+61 (0)2 8570 5050</a>
Mob: <a moz-do-not-send="true" href="tel:%2B61%20%280%29419%20142%20254" value="+61419142254" target="_blank">+61 (0)419 142 254</a>
Think Globally, Fix Locally
Geospatial Solutions enhanced with Open Standards and Open Source
<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://www.lisasoft.com" target="_blank">http://www.lisasoft.com</a>
</pre>
<br>
<br>
</font></span></div>
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</blockquote>
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-- <br>
Tim Sutton - QGIS Project Steering Committee Member (Release
Manager)<br>
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