[foss4g2014] Press releases party and brainstorming

[Eli Adam]

Hi All,

We have so much theme material [1]!  With all this theme material, I'd
like to start rolling it into promotional material and making a list
of where to use this promotional material.

Brainstorming and working in an evening social session to make
promotional material could be fun.  We'll need to write some press
releases soon.  Who wants to join me?

We have a great video targeted towards an international audience,
which explains Oregon geographically in reference to California.  This
could become the basis for numerous additional spoof videos ("...For
you Europeans, Oregon is the state just north of California. For those
of you in Seattle, Oregon is the state that buffers you from
California. ...For Californians, Oregon is your hat that keeps the
rain off (image of map of CA and OR distorted into rainhat and rain
being shed). ...For those of you in Portland, Oregon is the 99%+ rest
of the state that you don't notice. ...For those of you in Minneapolis
or Halifax, we are at almost the same latitude, but we wake up later
(sleep in longer). ...For Australians, Oregon is your second closest
neighbor (hey isn't everything other than NZ 'far'?) more geo jokes
here (Funny but very simplistic images attached).

Looking at the excellent publicly documented and logically laid out
2009 example recipebook/example could be a good starting point for us
[2] [3].  There is also the not quite as complete FOSS4G Handbook [4]
and in the last few days, Nottingham has gone on a kick filling in
information [5] [6].

Here are a few cracks at promotional material based on some of the
theme material.

Before the days of PostGIS, geometric buffer was done by releasing
'buffer birds' carrying rocks in a radial pattern. After a specific
amount of time, the birds would drop their rocks marking the buffered
feature. The number of birds released was proportional to the distance
of the buffer and there was always some debate as to the best color of
rock to use for the buffer. These finer points have now been master by
Portland's artisan geometric craftspeople who still practice this art.
Come to PDX to sample our craft beer, ride our handmade bikes, carry
your laptop in our handmade bike bags, and yes, use our buffer birds.
Or just come to FOSS4G 2014 to learn about buffer done by PostGIS (or
OGR with sqlite dialect, or GeoTools, or JTS/GEOS, or GeoServer, or
MapServer, or....lots more buffer software to feature here).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPKe9OfWs-M

Riding to PDX(/FOSS4G). - A theme of pictures or short videos of the
many PDX-OSGeo'ers who ride their bike to work. Preferably wearing an
OSGeo shirt, crossing an iconic bridge, incrementing the bike counter,
etc. We can then also get into some geometric musing on this, which
direction do/will people ride? We can then try to make this a theme in
other cities too, get videos of David Bitner riding his bike to work
in the snow in MN, "David Bitner is riding to PDX (270.5 degrees)"
"Aaron Racicot is unicycling to PDX while on a ferry crossing the
Puget Sound (181 degrees) [Aaron, if you come up with video like this
in an OSGeo shirt, we'll seriously owe you]"  Ride to us, see you in
PDX September 8-13th.

Listen to this gem from David Bitner, "One of the favorite stupid
sayings in the bike community here 'Portland is just a bike lane in
Minneapolis' Portland Avenue was one of the first on street commuter
oriented bike lanes when Minneapolis started getting serious about
bikes."  If we have "riding to FOSS4G/PDX" promotional material, we
can definitely play on this.

"Riding to FOSS4G/PDX" can lead to other transportation fun.  Wearing
OSGeo t-shirt while paddling kayak in Willamette, whole rowing team in
OSGeo shirts, on Trimet, on the aerial tram, walking, ... cross
country skiing .... motorcycle... skateboard... waterskiing...

Please wait until we formally release these as promotional material
before spreading them everywhere (i.e. the time for extensive
tweeting, blogging, Press Releases, etc will come once we have
something more than funny ideas kicking around).

What are your ideas?  How can these be improved?  What are good venues
for using the promotional material?  When/where do people want to work
on this material?  Who wants to put on an OSGeo shirt and shoot a
video of them riding in some iconic PDX location or manner?  Who wants
to help shoot those videos?

Eli


[1] http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/foss4g2014/2013-November/000146.html
[2] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G_2009_Press_Release_1
[3] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Category:FOSS4G2009
[4] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G_Handbook
[5] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G2013_Cookbook
[6] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G2013_Reflections_by_the_LOC
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