<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px">OK, this thread (actually two threads) are moving really fast and while I intended to have this post cover just the "Boston's story" perspective, I do believe it is appropriate for Boston to comment on some of the other issues that have been raised on the other "Call to discuss..." thread.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px">Philadelphia and Ottawa have told their story so it seems appropriate for Boston to tell ours as well<span style="font-size:12.8000001907349px">:</span><span style="font-size:12.8000001907349px"> </span><span style="font-size:12.8px"> </span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px"><ul><li style="margin-left:15px"><span style="font-size:12.8px">Boston has had a thriving "geo community" through various meetup groups (e.g. AvidGeo and Maptime) but has never had an OSGeo chapter.</span></li><li style="margin-left:15px"><span style="font-size:12.8px">Increasing numbers of people in the community have been to FOSS4G events (both global and North American) and have felt the energy.</span></li><li style="margin-left:15px"><span style="font-size:12.8px">Boston is known as a great "conference town" and has a somewhat unique blend of academia, government and high tech and we knew it could be a great venue.</span></li><li style="margin-left:15px"><span style="font-size:12.8px">Several of us began informal discussions to study the OSGeo selection process and to see what it would take to mount a bid.</span></li><li style="margin-left:15px"><span style="font-size:12.8px">To assess interest, and also to understand whether there were any dissenting opinions, we issued a broad-based letter of explanation and survey to the Boston geo community with the local meetup groups sharing their mailing lists. Our basic questions were: Is this a good idea? Could we get it done?</span></li><li style="margin-left:15px"><span style="font-size:12.8px">Over 100 people took the time to respond to the survey, and the response was overwhelming support and interest.</span></li><li style="margin-left:15px"><span style="font-size:12.8px">In the survey, we asked who would be interested in volunteering at the event and who would be interested in joining and "organizing committee". Through the survey we had 17 people volunteer to be on the Boston Location Organizing Committee (BLOC). Another 20 people relayed interest in "volunteering at the event" (if we were successful in bringing it to Boston).</span></li><li style="margin-left:15px"><span style="font-size:12.8px">We then conducted four BLOC planning meetings as we initially submitted the LOI and then built the full proposal. Inevitably, some people were not able to volunteer their time and did not make any of the planning meetings, and they were not included in the final BLOC. And, as described in the proposal we have a very strong and experienced BLOC and we also have BLOC members who have taken leadership on some of the sub-committees and wrote sections of the proposal document.</span></li><li style="margin-left:15px"><span style="font-size:12.8px">We had always planned to have a PCO and did some research on PCO's who had worked at other FOSS4G events in North America. During the process and as part of the Q&A on the LOI we were encouraged to look at <i>local</i> PCO's and we reached out to Delaney Meeting & Event Management. Cindy Delaney was excited by the prospect and volunteered some of her time to help us address key questions and to get good bids from hotels and conference venues. Many of us have known Cindy for a long time through her work with other New England-based geo events and she immediately added value to our team.</span></li><li style="margin-left:15px"><span style="font-size:12.8px">And then we submitted our proposal to host with a committed set of hands-on, local volunteers and a strong and experienced PCO.</span></li><li style="margin-left:15px"><span style="font-size:12.8px">We are ready for the next chapter of this story and we want to make both OSGeo and Boston proud. But, win, or lose, we know we have built a great team and put in a strong proposal and vision that we're all proud of.</span></li></ul><div><span style="font-size:12.8px">While we agree there are some fundamental issues that the selection committee faces (see below), we also ultimately agree that this is </span><u style="font-size:12.8px">not</u><span style="font-size:12.8px"> just about the kind of PCO that helps with 2017. We know that Boston is one of three very strong proposals that were prepared with great thought, care and effort. The proposals deserve close reads and scrutiny across the full variety of ideas presented.</span></div></div></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px"><span style="font-size:12.8px"><br></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px"><span style="font-size:12.8px">Now, we'd like to raise a couple of questions/comments on two things that Robert has brought up and also on Andrea's latest comment to the thread.</span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px">1. <b>Volunteer fatigue:</b> I've seen that mentioned several times - Robert uses the term "burned out volunteers" - but can that be taken as universal fact? Perhaps Boston is idealistic, but that's not necessarily what we've observed and several of us have served in various capacities on volunteer driven conferences. There's no doubt that the amount of work that goes into a conference takes a toll, but from our vantage there are many positive residual effects on the hosting community. Indeed, one of the drivers in Boston pursuing the event is to strengthen our geo open source community for the long haul. In addition, we see continued, significant volunteerism from many, many people (including most on the "conference_dev" list) who have participated in running past conferences. As we see it, the lesson learned is that a strong PCO <i>is required</i> to help with the logistics and take some of the load off of the LOC itself. Indeed, all three 2017 proposals have such a PCO partner.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:12.8px"><font face="tahoma, sans-serif">2. <b>2016 FOSS4G North America bids: </b>As has been observed, FOSS4GNA has a very different (and new) structure, and also for 2016 a very different venue selection process (i.e., no LOI, no proposals from interested host cities). I would guess I may not be the only one who was a little surprised to read that: "<span style="font-size:12.8px">Philadelphia worked with LocationTech to put together a bid for the FOSS4G-North America 2016 event and was short-listed." Indeed, no bids were solicited from anyone except from hotel/conference venues that Location Tech identified (there is an extensive thread on this subject on the foss4gna_selection listserve [Google group]). Rather, as per the process, Location Tech conducted an "venue RFP" and then announced the short-list based on their <i>internal</i> decision making (without receiving proposals from LOCs). Indeed, many people in Raleigh - ultimately, the winning location - were unaware they were even being considered until the short-list was announced by Location Tech. I don't doubt at all the Philadelphia and Location Tech worked together on the Philadelphia "bid", I just think it needs to be acknowledged it was a very different kind of bid, and process (i.e., there's no Raleigh or Philadelphia "proposal document" from an LOC).</span></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:12.8px"><span style="font-size:12.8px"><font face="tahoma, sans-serif"><br></font></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:12.8px"><span style="font-size:12.8px"><font face="tahoma, sans-serif">3. In Andrea's recent post there seems to be an implied assertion that only Location Tech can potentially <b>broaden the conference</b> to include other participants. Indeed, it was acknowledged that this has happened to some degree already with the current model. The FOSS4G agenda is <u>not</u> <i>only</i> about FOSS4G projects. In addition, the Boston proposal talks extensively about "broadening" participation including specific outreach activities aimed at the Boston/New England startup and technology (non-geo) communities. The point is, this is a choice for OSGeo; and the Philadelphia and Ottawa proposals are not necessarily the only way to attract new participants and sponsors to FOSS4G.</font></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:12.8px"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:12.8px"><div><span style="font-size:12.8px"><font face="tahoma, sans-serif">Again, best of luck in the call today, and in the voting over the week to come...</font></span></div><div><span style="font-size:12.8px"><font face="tahoma, sans-serif"><br></font></span></div><div><span style="font-size:12.8px"><font face="tahoma, sans-serif">MT & the BLOC </font></span></div></div></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Nov 8, 2015 at 10:10 PM, Robert Cheetham <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:cheetham@azavea.com" target="_blank">cheetham@azavea.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr">Conference Committee,<div><br></div><div>As Steven re-raised the question on the meeting logistics thread, I thought I'd elaborate on our PCO selection process on the Philadelphia thread.</div><div><br></div><div>First, let me say again, that there was no collaboration between the Ottawa and Philadelphia bids. Any common text arises from the fact that we worked with the same PCO and inevitably used text provided to us where it made sense.</div><div><br></div><div>Based on Dave's description of how they came to develop a bid, it sounds like we had different stories. Allow me to tell ours.</div><div><br></div><div>Philadelphia worked with LocationTech to put together a bid for the FOSS4G-North America 2016 event and was short-listed. As you know, we were not successful at winning the conference, and FOSS4G-NA 2016 will be held in Raleigh next spring. However, we had done a lot of legwork and decided to leverage this effort toward a more ambitious bid to bring the larger FOSS4G global event here.</div><div><br></div><div>Philadelphia hosted the OSGeo Code Sprint in Feb 2015. We promoted this as an event that invited developers from both OSGeo and LocationTech software projects. The result was work on OSGeo projects, LocationTech projects, and developers that work on projects housed in both organizations. It was fruitful. At the end of the day, the objective of both organizations is the development of a stronger geospatial open source ecosystem, and working together on building better software is the reason most of us are involved to begin with. Further, we had more sponsors than any previous OSGeo Code Sprint (including a cash sponsorship from LocationTech). Most of the new sponsors were from companies that are members of LocationTech.<br></div><div><br></div><div>When we made a decision to invite the Eclipse Foundation to help us with 2017 FOSS4G bid, we felt like it was a pragmatic decision at multiple levels:</div><div><br></div><div> * Many past FOSS4G events that relied on volunteers resulted in burned out volunteers - we didn't want to rely on a volunteer team to run the event.</div><div><br></div><div> * A collaboration with the Eclipse Foundation, another open source software foundation, would likely result in a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts. FOSS4G has never solely been about OSGeo projects; the event has always invited open source geospatial projects of all kinds. By including a second open source geospatial organization in the effort, we would have a greater likelihood of expanding the diversity of projects, people, partners, and sponsors that will be the key to a successful event. Eclipse is more than just a PCO, they are fellow open source geospatial collaborators, and I believe that's a good thing.</div><div><br></div><div> * At a personal level, I prefer to view the world in terms of potential non-zero sum outcomes. Providing LocationTech with a booth and some kind of logo on the web site does not diminish the OSGeo brand. Similarly, OSGeo's success does not diminish the younger LocationTech's short-term or long-term prospects. A bigger, healthier open source geospatial ecosystem benefits all of us.</div><div><br></div><div>We invited LocationTech and the Eclipse Foundation to serve as PCO because we felt that the result would be a better event and a richer open source geospatial ecosystem.</div><div><br></div><div>Best,</div><div><br></div><div>Robert</div><div><div class="gmail_extra"><div><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><span></span><span></span><br>------------------<br></div></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div></div></div></div><span class=""><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
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