[OSGeo-Discuss] Board of Directors meeting minutes

[Bart van den Eijnden]

Hey Arnulf,

I had no idea this was happening behind the scenes, so e-mails like this are good IMHO.

If I was OsGeo I would ask the current set of regular sponsors if they would be interested at all to sponsor in Beijing. Or has such a survey taken place already?

If the outcome is negative, I personally would not take the financial risk, even with a great FOSS4G organizer as Jeff taking it on.

Best regards,
Bart

-- 
Bart van den Eijnden
OSGIS - http://osgis.nl

On Nov 18, 2011, at 12:28 PM, Arnulf Christl (OSGeo) wrote:

> Folks,
> the OSGeo Board of Directors meets once a month in a public meeting on
> IRC. We then discuss the agenda which has been prepared on the OSGeo
> Wiki [1]. Thanks to Gary Sherman the meetings are logged [2]. We hold
> the meetings openly and every now and then somebody outside of the board
> has an interjection - which can be very helpful indeed. At the last
> meeting Gary Sherman suggested that we should circulate the results from
> our meetings because not that many people follow the board mailing list
> [3] read the minutes [4] or even the logs [5].
> 
> Currently we meet every second Thursday of a month at 17:00 UTC on IRC.
> We also aim at meeting in person at least once each year, usually during
> the FOSS4G conference.
> 
> One item I was explicitly asked to highlight to the broader community
> relates to FOSS4G 2012 in Beijing [6]. There has been a lot of talk
> about the challenges of this next edition of FOSS4G, these include
> language and cultural differences, sheer physical distance of the venue
> for many active OSGeo members, competing regional FOSS4G events,
> including a new one very likely in North America and that we are already
> very late in planning (we never had this little time to prepare).
> Therefore in a mail from September [7] I voted against having FOSS4G in
> Beijing but at the same time proposed a motion to hire Jeff McKenna for
> money to help organize the FOSS4G 2012 in Beijing. Jeff is the chair of
> the conference committee and helped organize every single FOSS4G we
> have celebrated so far, so he is a perfect fit. But he cannot spend as
> much time as will be required for FOSS4G in Beijing as a volunteer. The
> motion was not accepted by the board and so there was no decision but
> it started some thinking.
> 
> Jeff is a member of the board of directors and to avoid a conflict of
> interest he will abstain from any decision as suggested here [8]. The
> next step will be a proposal from Jeff describing the required work load
> and budget to get going. Then the board of directors will have to decide
> how to go forward – and all of this must happen asap.
> 
> You can see, this is a long ongoing process and all of it is openly
> available but, as Gary pointed out, many will probably not know anything
> about this.
> 
> So what do you think in general. Is this type of informative mail
> enough, or should we blog about the meetings in more detail, make a
> video or fully socialmedialize them? (...please bear in mind that we
> will then not be able to do other stuff, so it should better be
> important, not just a nice to have).  Suggestions are welcome.
> 
> Thanks,
> Arnulf
> 
> [1] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Board
> [2] http://irclogs.geoapt.com/osgeo/   ...starting at 17:03:02
> [3] http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/board
> [4] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Board_Meeting_2011-11-10#Minutes
> [5] http://irclogs.geoapt.com/osgeo/%23osgeo.2011-11-10.log
> [6] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G_2012
> [7] http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/board/2011-September/008872.html
> [8] http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/board/2011-September/008894.html
> 
> -- 
> The Open Source Geospatial Foundation
> Arnulf Christl, President
> http://www.osgeo.org
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss at lists.osgeo.org
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
> 

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