[OSGeo-Discuss] Hacking OSGeo

Wed Sep 17 07:06:47 PDT 2014

Guys,

several points:

as Bart pointed out, the discussion still continues. I personally am
not sure, whether this decision should go to board itself, whether
conference committee should be involved in the decision as well.

I welcome Andrew's "motions", since that is something, we can vote
about (more lower):

2014-09-17 13:45 GMT+02:00 Andrew Ross <andrew.ross at eclipse.org>:
> Dear Bart, Jürgen, All
>
> Here's a few thoughts that are probably a good place to start. We started to
> get into them at Saturday's board meeting. Feedback here is very welcome.
>
> 1) The FOSS4G North America 2015 site mentions the event is a collaborative
> event by OSGeo & LocationTech. Is this acceptable? Yes/No

On our Saturday session, we actually agreed on the point 1, related to
FOSS4G-NA. It was not written in the minutes, because I've forgotten
to write it there (mea culpa - sorry), it was partly due to late
afternoon, long talk, forget to take any minutes. Another question is,
whether Board has any right to vote on that. As long as the conference
is about "free and open source software for geospatial", you can do it
(but could board prohibit that anyway?). We are thankful, OSGeo has
already logo on conference page (you did already significantly more,
that other LOCs). Is this related to OSGeo's conference committee? Or
NA-Conference-Committee?

I agree, that "formal agreement" from the board side would highly make
sense. If it is not too late, we can vote about this on our next
meeting (should be latests within month from now).

>
> For what it's worth, our committees felt the above was totally fine.
>
> Just in case not everyone was aware, the Eclipse Foundation's (aka
> LocationTech's) role in the event is to finance/underwrite, organize
> logistics like catering/Audio & Visual/etc, develop the web sites,  handle
> registration, handle all the on-site details during the event, and business
> development/ working with sponsors throughout.

I was not following the discussion about FOSS4G-NA organisation,
therefore I welcome this summary and I personally am OK with that.

>
> Our committees (Organizing & Program) are made up of people from the FOSS4G
> community which transcends OSGeo, LocationTech, & beyond. They decide the
> program content at arm's length and have heavy influence over how the
> conference looks/feels and any special programs we're doing such as
> diversity, outreach, and social events/aspects of the conference.

No doubt on that. I personally welcome, that communities are getting
closer together, rather than splitting. One event for all is IMHO
better.

>
> 2) For future global events where the Eclipse Foundation (aka. LocationTech)
> provides organizing logistics as described in #1, would the same
> representation on the website as #1 be acceptable? Yes/No

Again, we addressed this issue in our face2face discussion, but (IIRC)
did not come to clear conclusion. Two issues I see there:

1 - since there is no firm organisation committee, you would have  to
talk to LOC directly  (at least for 2015), whether they welcome your
help or whether they are on their own (we probably can not force them,
since they went for the bit independently on OSGeo).

2 - FOSS4 (global) was always promoted as "the OSGeo event". It is one
of our most visible events, with highest impact. Not to forget the
revenue, which is very important to OSGeo. Therefore we ("I" on this
place, just trying to point some people concerns) would like to see
OSGeo is promoted on FOSS4G and people should understand, that OSGeo
is *the* organisation, on which behalf the conference is taking place.
We provide LOC with seeding money, we give them permission (aka we ask
them politely) to organise FOSS4G on our behalf.

Of course, if LocationTech is taking significant responsibility for
the conference, their appearance on the event shall be significant as
well. On Saturday, we discussed about possibility, to form it like
"Hosted by OSGeo, organised by LocationTech" or similar (please, do
not take mi literally, it was long day) - AFAIK with no clear
conclusion.

Right now, OSGeo is providing seed money, selecting the venue, little
bit of infrastructure (mailing list, ..). The rest is on LOC (if I'm
not completely wrong). OSGeo is expecting certain revenue.

As far as I understand it, LocationTech is accepting our selection
process, they would like to help with the tasks, we are not able to
address and LOC must deal with (catering, audio/video, web sites,
registration, sponsors) - shall LocationTech talk to LOC on first
place? I can imagine, some might be really glad with some help.

How to organise common agreement on daily basis? Should LocationTech
people join conference-committee (some might be already in)? Platform
for talks between people, who are doing, is IMHO missing (seems, for
FOSS4G-Europe, we are going to form one). I just have no idea, how to
get things set-up within current conference-global approach.

Sorry, this should go to conference-dev mlist, just continuing the
thread. But any reaction welcomed. Generally speaking: I think, we are
requiring too much from LOC. If there is helping organisation around,
who has know-how and power to make things happen, who can take care on
some details, we as volunteers are not, I would welcome it. If they
should be co-organising the event, I'm fine identify them clearly in
the marketing materials as "co-organising" organisation (what ever
that means). I believe, OSGeo's growth is dependent on FOSS4G success,
therefore it's significant appearance, as hosting organisation, is
crucial. Or any other solution with similar marketing impact :-) If
some other org. is having profit out of it, I'm fine with that.

thanks for continuing.

Jachym

>
> Kind regards,
>
> Andrew
>
>
>
> On 17/09/14 02:29, Bart van den Eijnden wrote:
>
> Hi Jurgen,
>
> some of the discussions started on the conference e-mail list a while back
> (http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/conference_dev/) but only recently this
> discussion moved to the discuss list. That might explain some of the
> confusion.
>
> I don't think there is any information which is not out in the open as yet.
>
> Andrew is best to comment on your other question, but I personally was
> mostly interested to see how conference organising could benefit from
> LocationTech's offer to help.
>
> No board decision has happened as yet. Normally after discussion settles in
> the community, the board might vote on specific motions that are brought to
> the table, but this step of the process has not yet been reached.
>
> Hope this clarifies a bit, and sorry for the unsettling irritation all this
> has caused.
>
> Best regards,
> Bart
>
> On 17 Sep 2014, at 10:21, Jürgen E. Fischer <jef at norbit.de> wrote:
>
> Hi Bart,
>
> On Wed, 17. Sep 2014 at 09:49:51 +0200, Bart van den Eijnden wrote:
>
> can you please at least give the board a chance to form an opinion on this?
> If it ever gets to the point that a motion is on the table and you have not
> been persuaded, you can always vote -1.
>
> Did an essential piece of information not get into the open yet, did I
> merely
> miss it or just missed to see it's importance?
>
> Is it "just" the FOSS4G event organisation that LocationTech apparently
> wants
> to help (more?) with or is there more?
>
> What pending board decision is causing all this (rather unsettling)
> irritation?
>
>
> Jürgen
>
> --
> Jürgen E. Fischer           norBIT GmbH             Tel. +49-4931-918175-31
> Dipl.-Inf. (FH)             Rheinstraße 13          Fax. +49-4931-918175-50
> Software Engineer           D-26506 Norden             http://www.norbit.de
> QGIS release manager (PSC)  Germany                    IRC: jef on FreeNode
>
>
>
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-- 
Jachym Cepicky
e-mail: jachym.cepicky gmail com
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