[OSGeo-Discuss] Announcement: Call for Location global FOSS4G 2023

[María Arias de Reyna]

On Wed, Jan 12, 2022 at 10:50 PM Jonathan Moules via Discuss
<discuss at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:
> On the surface, this is a good idea, but unfortunately it has a fundamental problem:
> There are no "criteria for selection" of the conference beyond "the committee members voted for this proposal". There's zero transparency in the process.

I can't let this serious accusation go unanswered.

All the process is done via public mailing lists. All the criteria is
published on the Request For Proposals. Anyone on the community can
review the RFP and propose changes to it. Anyone on the community can
read the proposals and interact with the candidatures.

The only two things that are not public are:
 * Confidentiality issues with the proposals. For example sometimes
providers give you huge discounts in exchange of not making that
discount public. So you can't show the budget publicly, unless you are
willing to not use the discount.
 * What each member of the committee votes. And this is to ensure they
can freely vote without fearing consequences.

Which are two very reasonable exceptions.

Anyone can ask questions to the candidates. If I am right, you
yourself have been very active on this process for the past years.
Were you not the one that asked what a GeoChica is or am I confusing
you with some other Jonathan? If I am confusing you with some other
Jonathan, my mistake. Maybe you are not aware of the transparency of
the process.

The process is transparent and public except on those two exceptions
that warrantee the process is going to be safe.