[FOSS4G2016] update 20.04.2016

[Jeff McKenna]

And please do consider requesting funding/money from the OSGeo Board for 
this FOSSGIS hacking event (to help cover costs of hosting the event); 
there are actual steps to follow for this request, at 
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Code_Sprint_Guidelines

-jeff



On 2015-04-20 9:32 AM, Jeff McKenna wrote:
> 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
>>
>>
>>
>>