[FOSS4G2016] update 20.04.2016

[Jeff McKenna]

Thanks for this update Till.  Glad to hear that the "UN branding" dream 
is still alive!

That FOSSGIS hacking event is very interesting, this is the first I've 
heard of it, covering so many great projects and with a cool location; 
please share this news on the OSGeo Discuss list also.  (or maybe I 
missed that message)

-jeff



On 2015-04-20 8:21 AM, Till Adams wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> there are some things coming motion now, so I think it is adequate to
> inform you.
>
> Last friday I had a meeting with the chapter for business development of
> the city of bonn, with Prof. Klaus Gereve and also Bonn Tourist GmbH.
>
> Mr. Greve is the person organizing the EARSeL conference and also helps
> in our organisation.
>
> First of all I asked the city representatives about possible locations
> for the workshops. They will care for that for now and will come back
> with a list of possible locations. I think that makes things much easier
> and wil lhelp us to get access to cheaper locaitons, because they come
> from a more officially side.
>
> Second, Mr. Greve and I reported about our idea to connect both
> conferences - at least by "exchanging" a track inside the programme. The
> next idea is to conect these single events by a common "roof", e.g.
> called "Bonner summer of GIS" or something that sounds even better (any
> ideas?)
>
> Generally the city of Bonn is very interested in such a "GIS event2 - in
> sight of business development, in sight of promoting Bonn as conference
> city and also to promite the Bonner Geo-Cluster. So in the moment we are
> looking for even more "geo"-related events being put in our
> time-framework and want to create a lot of attention via press
> statements and so on. This will also help us getting more people and
> also for finding sponsors.
>
> Also Mr. Greve worked a lot in sight of getting the "UN branding" for
> both conferences and also he worked on the possibility to get some of
> the "UN reserved contingent" from WCCB especially for FOSs4G. This would
> save us a lot of money.
> So this dream is still alive, we're working on that!
>
>
> Inside FOSSGIS e.V. we've found a decision on how and in which
> constellation we will run the conference. The last discussed
> opportunities were either doing this as FOSSGIS e.V. with a seperate
> bank account. We were a little bit anxious about the bunch of money
> overrunning our normal financial movemets about ten to twenty times and
> the reaction of the finance office, because we do not want to risk our
> common public interest status.
>
> To prevent us from that, there is the possibility of getting a binding
> information from the financial office.
>
> The second alternative would be to found a new company, the "FOSSGIS
> GmbH"  which in the end would organize the conference and would be shut
> down afterwards. Also a sure idea, but that would close the door for
> saving some taxes.
>
> So our plans in the moment are, to try to get a positive binding
> information. This might help us saving some taxes (I wrote about that in
> the proposal as you for sure all read ;-))
>
> If this will not work, we are going to found a company.
> In general both opportunities will give us a safe base for our acting,
> but of course there is a catch - it will take some weeks to fix either
> opportunity and in this time, we can't open a bank account, we can't
> make any binding contracts. I've communicated this already to PCO and
> also to WCCB (and witrh this also to OSGeo ;-)) - until then we can't
> request any money from OSGeo as well (and we couldn't spend it at all)
>
> Last, there is the FOSSGIS hacking weekend where I will talk to the
> chair of the Küstenschmiede, who offered to create the webpage for
> FOSS4G. Anybody else intereseted in joining us? See:
> http://www.fossgis.de/wiki/FOSSGIS_Hacking_Event_2015_Nummer_3
>
>
> So long,
>
> Till
>
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