[Foss4g2008loc] Feedback from GISSA National Council meeting on 4Oct

[Graeme McFerren]

I rather see a massive opportunity for developing mutual understanding and seeing how the FOSS stack and propritary stacks line up and complement/ compete with each other... The reality going forward in South Africa is that while there is a huge push for FOSS coming over the horizon, proprietary software is very dominant and is not going to be displaced easily. FOSS and proprietary will be walking together for a while. Lets make friends and demonstrate inclusiveness :-) 

BTW, ESRI makes use of FOSS software and is engaged in some open source processes like the 52North initiative for example and I think were a sponsor at FOSS4G 2007. 

Graeme
>>> "Dewald Troskie" <nucleotic at gmail.com> 10/10/07 10:30 AM >>>

Hi All, 


  

Just a point - FOSS4G is about Free and Open Source GIS, not proprietry talks. That is against the spirit of the conference in my opinion - just as the name states. Otherwise we might as well invite the "Microsoft" of GIS (we all know whom I'm talking about) to jump onboard. If users are interested in that, then they should attend one of the ESRI User conferences. 


  

The debate may be a good idea, but it should be properly mediated to prevent scope creep and have proper direction without getting ugly (I have seen it happen before between professionals). 


  

Just a note. 

My Zim $5 worth. 


  

Dewald. 



From: foss4g2008loc-bounces at lists.osgeo.org [mailto:foss4g2008loc-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Gavin Fleming
Sent: 10 October 2007 09:01 AM
To: foss4g2008loc at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: [Foss4g2008loc] Feedback from GISSA National Council meeting on 4Oct




I gave brief feedback from FOSS4G2007 to the GISSA National Council and asked for their comments on FOSS4G2008 organisation: 


An idea was proposed for 
blending proprietary and FOSS talks 

: have themed rooms where delegates know certain streams or cross-cutting content like FOSS will be presented. Previous suggestions include having streams containing FOSS, though not necessarily keeping them in the same room, or randomly interspersing talks with FOSS content throughout a topic stream and just identifying them with some flag. The point was also made that many delegates will see a talk for the application, not for the tools used, i.e. to them it's not important whether FOSS or proprietary GIS was used. 

The 
marketing 

message 

must be open and inclusive. While we may run a formal FOSS vs proprietary debate, confrontation is not the message. Most debate will occur in the presentations and corridors anyway. 

Re topics, it was suggested that we add 
topics for business and government 

delegates (pretty much what is being discussed on OSGeo-Discuss at the moment) such as 

FOSS GIS migration strategies 

FOSS GIS business case, FOSS vs proprietary TCO, etc. 

It was advised that we aim to 
break even 

with 600 delegates but plan space for 1000 delegates. 

Carrin would send a letter to GISSA members and vendors advising them of the conference and asking them to 
plan for the time and budget to attend 

. 

A request was made to 
boost the academic component 

of the conference. i.e. improve the options available to those who want peer review and publication of their papers. Antony Cooper will participate in this. 


Local 

Cape participation in the LOC should be boosted. So far Inge is the main person on the ground there. 
Russell Hope 

might want to get more involved and 
Derek Clarke 

will be approached ( 
Gavin 

will approach Derek) 

The whole Council asked to be placed on the LOC mailing list. 

In the development of an agreement between GISSA and OSGeo we need to clarify respective risks, contributions and benefits and draft the agreement accordingly. 


Gavin 


  


  


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