[Geo4All] EGU General Assembly 2017: OSGeo events: Ideas ? Volunteers ?

["Peter Löwe"]

Dear all, (sorry for cross-posting)

the EGU general assembly will take place in Vienna from April 23 - 28. While the call for abstracts is now closed, the calls for events as part of the conference are still open. 

Starting in 2014, there were OSGeo-themed reach out events ("Townhall") at every EGU general assembly. Townhalls are evening events allowing for reach out and discussion, similar to a birds of a feather meeting (with refreshments). Detailed information on what was done so far is available in the Wiki (https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/EGU_Townhall_2014 https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/EGU_Townhall_2015 https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/EGU_Townhall_2016). 

During the last years, many other reach-out opportunities were discovered at EGU (splinter meetings, workshops, evening meetings with the austrian OSGeo community), but as always volunteers are the lifeblood to make them happen:

it would be good to know who is planning to attend EGU this year. Who's interested to "do (cool) OGSGeo stuff" there ? What do we want to do ?

I would propose to request (at least) again a timeslot at the conference for a dedicated OSGeo-Townhall, allowing for discussions like the growing siginificance of Open Science, and OSGeos part of this. The deadline for this is January 20. With the current budget allowance for the OpenGeoScience Committee, the funding is available (funding is only needed for the refreshments, room booking is for free). Yet we need volunteers and speakers to make it happen. Who's interested to lend a hand ?

Further, I would like to pitch the idea, to also have a splinter meeting in addition during the lunch hours on another day ("birds of a feather"-style get together). This would allow to reach out to people who are unable to attend the evening event. This format is quite popular among the scientific publishers, to give the attendees a quick briefing on what has happened during the last year. This could be used to inform about all the latest developments of OSGeo and the community projects. What are your thoughts about this ?

More information about the EGU GA 2017:
http://egu2017.eu/information/general_information.html

Best,
Peter