BOF ideas

[Tyler Mitchell]

On Wednesday 10 May 2006 17:41, Gary Lang wrote:
> I see.
>
> Then BOFs are better.

At the conference in Minneapolis last summer, Ned and I pulled together a BOF.  
It was very successful - we had about 30 45 people attend.  The topic 
was "Open Source for Natural Resource Management" - a bit of a niche, to 
be sure, but it was a good example of how a BOF can work out.  

Many good contacts were made, we started a mailing list to share 
conference/speaking opportunities.  One trick was to have a couple people 
lined up to do some presenting.  

If my memory serves me correctly, I did a bit of talking, Ned did as well, and 
Steve Lime showed off some MapServer applications and Brent Wood showed us 
some work he'd been doing with FOSS GIS.  I can't recall, but I think maybe 
Franck Martin also presented a bit on maps in Tikiwiki (or am I wishful 
remembering?).

Regardless, the mini-presentations kick-started discussion and opened the 
group to realise the bigger/common picture that we all shared.  Other than 
that, Ned and I just helped get the word out, find a couple speakers and 
casually facilitate discussion.  I suggest we run a BOF at Where in a similar 
fashion.  Especially if it means giving a couple more OSGeo projects an 
opportunity to do a very short presentation about their tools (ones that 
aren't on the larger agenda or wouldn't warrant a larger presentation).

Has anyone else ran one, or been at one, and can share their thoughts about 
how it ran?

Tyler