[OSGeo-Discuss] FOSS4GNA - Someone is watching you :-o

[Steven Feldman]

+1,000,000 to what Paul has said

I also passed the FOSS4G 2013 list (which included names for 2011 and previous FOSSS4Gs) to the 2014 team in the spirit of fraternal support to future FOSS4Gs, I believe that was the right thing to do even though we neglected to have specific opt in/out option. No doubt they passed the extended list to 2015 and they have in turn shared with 2016. This is good not bad.

We need to separate the animus towards LT from the apparent horror at the use of a ‘commercial’ service like MailChimp. Those of us who earn our living from Open Source Geo need to promote Open Source Geo and that means outreach to people who may not be followers of our mailing lists, so we need other channels. e-mail marketing is an established way of reaching potential FOSS4G participants, it is not evil, it probably isn’t spam (even if you haven’t opted in) as long as you provide an immediate opt out from further mail (which MailChimp does really well).

If LT are willing to allow us access to their large contact list, surely that is something we should say thank you for not complain about? We might want to ask ourselves why their list is so much larger than ours? We have a list of several thousand accumulated from previous FOSS4Gs, using MailChimp enables us to clean that list down to interested participants very efficiently by providing a simple opt out.

There is no reason why we should not continue to maintain a growing list of people who have attended, sponsored or expressed interest in OSGeo/FOSS4G. The norm should be that you are opted in by default as a result of past interest but every mail provides the option to opt out.

Evangelising Open Source Geo is IMHO immensely worthwhile. To do that you need to be a bit pushy while finding the right balance. 

Let’s applaud our advocates, conference organisers and marketeers, not moan at them

Apologies if this is a bit ranty (the first draft was way more ranty)

Peace and goodwill to everyone for the holiday season whatever your faith
______
Steven


> On 16 Dec 2015, at 20:00, board-request at lists.osgeo.org wrote:
> 
> From: Paul Ramsey <pramsey at cleverelephant.ca <mailto:pramsey at cleverelephant.ca>>
> Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] FOSS4GNA - Someone is watching you :-o
> Date: 16 December 2015 at 17:16:15 GMT
> To: Daniel Morissette <dmorissette at mapgears.com <mailto:dmorissette at mapgears.com>>
> Cc: OSGeo Discussions <discuss at lists.osgeo.org <mailto:discuss at lists.osgeo.org>>
> 
> 
> Agree w/ Daniel in all ways. We want our events to succeed, no? So we
> use marketing techniques to do so. Emails and so on. And we track who
> opens them so we can get better at marketing. Like any other business
> trying to succeed. Mail chimp is currently convenient, in the past
> other technologies were convenient (I spammed people in 2007 using a
> custom perl script, because I am a God Among Men), in the future
> different technologies will be convenient. But they are all going
> towards making a good event.
> 
> Naturally the first targets of marketing the event will be people who
> have attended past events under the same/similar umbrella. I provided
> the 2007 attendance list to foss4g events for a number of years until
> it had grown entirely stale. I felt good about it. I revelled in the
> goodness of it.
> 
> I have spammed. I will spam again, in the service of a good cause.
> That is my weakness. That is my strength.
> 
> P.

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