[OSGeo-Discuss] 2015 North American conference

[Andrew Ross]

Hello Everyone,

Please excuse the cross post between OSGeo's discuss & conference_dev 
lists as well as LocationTech's discussion list. I'm hoping to enable 
inclusive discussion about an idea.

Bit of background, this coming May (19-21), LocationTech Summit is 
co-hosted with Location Intelligence in Washington D.C. 
<http://www.locationintelligence.net/>. Travel restrictions for Federal 
Government employees for instance meant holding this in D.C. was 
important in 2014.

We have started planning for 2015, and I wanted to reach out and see if 
an idea might be of interest to the greater community.

The idea is to co-host LocationTech Summit, FOSS4G North America, and 
EclipseCon next year in the spring.

For those that haven't been:

  * EclipseCon is a great  developer conference & covers topics that I
    feel may be a really nice complement such as Science, Internet of
    Things, Automotive, Software development best practice, and more.
    While there are some awesome talks in the area, it's not just about
    the IDE. :-)
  * FOSS4G NA is the regional sibling of FOSS4G Global, also a great
    developer conference, and focused on geospatial technologies. It is
    a must attend event if you're into web mapping or looking for open
    source GIS solutions.
  * LocationTech Summit is new (first one this May), similar to FOSS4G
    however perhaps has a stronger focus on high performance
    geoprocessing technologies and new technologies like GeoGit for
    instance.
  * My feeble attempt at contrast aside, I think these last two will see
    a lot of the same speakers & audience.

A few thoughts:

  * We believe a combined event could likely be done to prioritize
    camaraderie which is so important for open source projects &
    community. i.e. avoid anyone feeling lost in a huge event.
  * We feel the mutual outreach to people across communities would be
    really useful, interesting, and spark wonderful ideas we can't predict.
  * The logistical work can be done by full time conference organizers
    who organize EclipseCon each year. The program is up to the
    communities to set.
  * For those seeking suppliers, partners, & customers, this should make
    for more opportunities.
  * Profit sharing with significant participating groups is doable.
    We're glad to help figure out a fair and amicable solution.
  * Ensuring each group are well served is a priority of course. We
    think this combined event might attract people who might not
    otherwise come to any of them. But we'll have to try and see.

Thoughts? Comments? Suggestions? Is this a good idea? Interested?

Kind regards,

Andrew

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