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Hello Everyone,<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
Bit of background, this coming May (19-21), <a
href="http://www.locationintelligence.net/">LocationTech Summit is
co-hosted with Location Intelligence in Washington D.C.</a>.
Travel restrictions for Federal Government employees for instance
meant holding this in D.C. was important in 2014.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
The idea is to co-host LocationTech Summit, FOSS4G North America,
and EclipseCon next year in the spring. <br>
<br>
For those that haven't been:<br>
<ul>
<li>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. :-)</li>
<li>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.</li>
<li>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.<br>
</li>
<li>My feeble attempt at contrast aside, I think these last two
will see a lot of the same speakers & audience.</li>
</ul>
A few thoughts:<br>
<ul>
<li>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.</li>
<li>We feel the mutual outreach to people across communities would
be really useful, interesting, and spark wonderful ideas we
can't predict.</li>
<li>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.</li>
<li>For those seeking suppliers, partners, & customers, this
should make for more opportunities.<br>
</li>
<li>Profit sharing with significant participating groups is
doable. We're glad to help figure out a fair and amicable
solution.<br>
</li>
<li>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.</li>
</ul>
<p>Thoughts? Comments? Suggestions? Is this a good idea? Interested?<br>
</p>
<p>Kind regards,<br>
</p>
<p>Andrew<br>
</p>
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