[Foss4g2011] Re: [Foss4g2011-private] Re: Bunch of procrastinators :)

[Seven (aka Arnulf)]

On 04/15/2011 11:10 PM, Peter Batty wrote:
> Now at 253 total - so up to 47% submitted today, 24% yesterday.
>
> On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 2:34 PM, Peter Batty <peter at ebatty.com
> <mailto:peter at ebatty.com>> wrote:
>
>     So with 10 hours left, a quick analysis on papers submitted by day:
>
>     Today: 103, 43%
>     Yesterday: 60, 25%
>     Day before: 24, 10%
>     Previous 2.5 months: 51, 22%
>
>     Latest total 238
>
>     Cheers,
>          Peter.

Haha, I love this community. We have cultivated perfection in 
procrastination. Otoh, this seem to be true of most conferences around 
innovative topics, so nothing to worry about really. And then we live in 
this accelerated information society which is founded on just-in-time 
management, so probably this is just the way it is.

Thanks for all your efforts!

What intrigues me is whether we will have "enough" submission to address 
the needs of Open Source newbies. Like in:
* What are the business models?
* Why can I trust Open Source
* Who produces FOSS (and why do they give it away fro free, are they all 
hippies and communists)?
* Do I have to throw away all my investment, if I turn to Open Source?
* Will this work with my existing infrastructure?
* Is it only good for playing around / give me some serious use cases
* ...and so on.

Some more thoughts on this (ignore if you already have it all set up and 
done):
I had a chat with Joe Francica and Adena Schutzberg when we went online 
before an interview [1] (I probably learned more from them in that chat 
than they did from the interview we had later...). They are pretty sure 
that there will be many attendees who are only starting to tentatively 
look into FOSS and will take the chance that the conference is nearby. 
We also came to the conclusion that the starting point for FOSS is very 
different in the the US than for example in Germany where it is a 
broadly understood and accepted concept. In the US FOSS still seems to 
be a lot more in the innovation phase.

Therefore it might be helpful to actively design track that focuses on 
the needs of this clientele. This might somewhat contradict the way we 
have designed the program in previous years with a knowledgeable 
community choosing things. But it would support the mission of OSGeo to 
spread word.

What do you think?

Have fun,
Arnulf.

[1] 
http://www.directionsmag.com/podcasts/podcast-osgeo-open-source-arnulf-christl/174320

-- 
Exploring Space, Time and Mind
http://arnulf.us