[OSGeo-Discuss] FOSS4G Organizing

[Paul Ramsey]

I have two contradictory positions wrt LocationTech and event organizing, and I’ll start with this one, since it’s easier: as long as the organizations are separate, I think that OSGeo should maintain its own brand and use a professional organizer that is 100% dedicated to OSGeo without any conflicts of interest, perceived or otherwise.

There are a number of places to start in finding such a corporate partner for event planning. An obvious thing to do would be to look at other successful international technology events in our space and who organizes them.

 http://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/organizers/conference_organizer_contacts.html
 https://us.pycon.org/2014/about/staff/
 http://events.linuxfoundation.org/#event-services

If nothing else, folks at those organizations could refer us to other companies we may not have heard to so we could run a real competition for our business.

Since getting involved in a commercial relationship like this is a big, existential decision for the organization, I think it falls to the board to decide

(a) if moving to a single professional event organizer for all major foss4g events (international, na, eu) is warranted
(b) if so, assigning a small team to speak with the alternatives, and bring a concrete decision in the form of a recommended company and contract terms to the board

It is important to get a decision on (a) as quickly as possible, as the venue decision for 2016 will have to be made and which organizing principle it falls under is important to establish sooner than later.

P.

-- 
Paul Ramsey
http://cleverelephant.ca
http://postgis.net
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/discuss/attachments/20140915/4fa1484b/attachment-0002.html>