[Marketing] Event Owner for FOSS4G

[Cameron Shorter]

Tyler,
I'd like to strongly recommend Tim Bowden for the OSGeo Booth 
coordinator role.

He did a very good job setting up the OSGeo stand at the WALIS 
conference in Western Australia last year and he is an entertaining and 
passionate OSGeo salesman.

Unfortunately, he hasn't been able to scrape funds together for 
FOSS4G2008 (he is a 1 man company and can't justify the expense). But 
with elementary expenses paid, he would be there like a shot.

Financially, he doesn't cost much. Perth is not far from South Africa, 
so flights should be less than for others, and a few beer boxes are 
sufficient for accommodation.  (He'd drink the beer first).

And most importantly from my point of view, we would really like to have 
someone from the Australian FOSS4G2009 committee on the stand, so that 
we can promote FOSS4G 2009, and Tim is just the man for the job.


Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo) wrote:
> As discussed a while back at one of our last meetings, I was trying to 
> line up someone to help be the event owner for FOSS4G - to help 
> organise and coordinate OSGeo's marketing through the booth, etc.  
> Everyone I talk to who is going to be at the event only has limited 
> amount of time to commit, or cannot help organise before the event.
>
> So I started to talk to a few people who I have worked with at 
> previous events and who might be more likely to attend if they had a 
> free conference pass and a small budget to offset some of their 
> costs.  The free pass wasn't really enough for anyone I spoke to.  
> Since it looks like I won't be able to attend, it will be critical to 
> have someone who can do the planning and delivery of the event, but 
> still have some support from me when needed.  Some of my own travel 
> budget could be used to help cover some of the costs but ultimately it 
> would be general marketing costs for OSGeo. [1]
>
> This is the one event that I believe is important enough to make sure 
> we have a full time booth staffer and planner/coordinator available.  
> Volunteers certainly are still needed to do it right, but unless there 
> is one person to go to, the whole effort can fall apart.  Ideally 
> there'd be two people, but I won't push it this year ;-)
>
> I would like to propose a budget of $3500 to cover our presence there:
>
> * $1000 - handouts, collateral, shirts, banners, table cover, etc.  
> With new branding where possible.
> * $500 - on-site booth costs for maintenance, upgrades, equip rentals, 
> etc.  Like video displays, extra chairs, cleaning...
> * $1500 - costs for staffing, travel and food costs, etc.
> * $500 - miscellaneous - some buffer room for unexpected items.
>
> Think of it as a delegation exercise for me, I would easily spend that 
> in my own staff time, travel costs and merchandise, etc. if I was going.
> Sound reasonable?
>
> Tyler
>
> [1] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Marketing_Budget_2008
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> Marketing at lists.osgeo.org
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-- 
Cameron Shorter
Geospatial Systems Architect
Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254

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