[Foss4g2009] preparation for Capetown

[Tim Bowden]

Sorry Dave,

Forward looking statement.  Will be.

TH are putting some materials together (Sydney focused) and I'll be
working on adding some OSGeo focused portion.   A little help here
wouldn't go astray.  Either way, I'll pass everything this way before I
use it.

Couple of points to consider for the pitch:

1. Involve regional chapters in the Sydney conf somehow.  We made
promises during biding and we need to find a way to honour those.  This
is a potential opportunity to sell added value to potential SE Asia
delegates.

2.  Packaging content for Govt involvement.  IE, Govt management level
panel discussion etc (at least that was one of the ideas kicked around
way back when).  The thinking was that we needed to highlight the value
proposition for local/state/fed govt spatial people (tech and
management), and in such a way they could easily sell that value to
their bosses to get permission.  It's very easy for management level to
say no to tech level requests for conf attendance, and we need to make
it easy for them to see the value.  We still need to explore how we do
that, but I see it more of a packaging of what we already have rather
than something completely new.

3. Open data.  There are some exciting things happening in this part of
the world wrt freeing up data that we can explore.  NZ govt giving data
to OSM, Qld govt selling the idea of CC licensing govt data, Victorian
govt building a data sharing framework, WA govt putting govt data in
wms/wfs and so on.  I believe we can get many of these people in the one
room and have a great panel type discussion giving a "cutting edge" view
of what the thinking is.  Only thing missing (so far) would be some
Canadian high level govt types, though I'm sure we will get something
when we ask ;-)

4.  Education.  This was a possible focus area we discussed during
bidding.  I don't think we've thought about this.  Where do we want to
go as a group?

5. One of the issues govt has is the culture of open source and how Govt
can come to terms with how this changes their opportunities and
challenges.  That's a hot issue we need to address during the conf,
because there is some experience down here with this, and I believe a
thirst for more knowledge.

6. The opportunity to pitch to the Cape Town conf is not just a sales
effort to them, but (and here I'm assuming it will be on video for later
use) a chance to point others to it later on as a sales tool to both
potential sponsors and delegates.

7.  What other specific value propositions can we put together?

I'm not sure yet how these should be worked into a "value proposition"
for potential delegates, so ideas welcome!

Regards,
Tim

On Thu, 2008-09-18 at 08:16 -0700, Dave Patton wrote:
> On 2008/09/16 8:15 AM, Dave Patton wrote:
> > Is there anything that "we want to know"
> > about FOSS4G2008 in Capetown that we can
> > communicate to Tim, and/or the 2008 OC,
> > so that it can be addressed/reviewed
> > during the conference?
> 
> Related to that, in an email on the OSGeo-Discuss
> mailing list, Tim said that there is "a trailer
> for the Sydney conf next year". Is that a "forward
> looking statement", or does this already exist?
> 
> If there are materials about the 2009 conference
> that are going to be used in Capetown, I'd like
> to see them (I won't be going to FOSS4G2008).
> 
-- 
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake
when you make it again.