[Marketing] Event Owner for FOSS4G

[Arnulf Christl]

Cameron Shorter wrote:
> Tyler,
> I'd like to strongly recommend Tim Bowden for the OSGeo Booth 
> coordinator role.

Tim,
what do you say? 

If you are interested I will talk to OSGeo Finance and see whether we can bend Tyler's travel costs to your name and make you the official OSGeo Event Owner for FOSS4G 2008. This would mean that you are sort of hired by OSGeo to represent, man and manage the booth. I say "sort of hired" because I think OSGeo never did this before so we are creating a precedence here. But I think it is a good one as we are running short on staff everywhere and volunteers are cool but they are even better if you can pay them - at least a bit. 

But before I continue down that road please confirm whether you are actually available and would be willing to do what Cameron suggested. 

Best regards, 
Arnulf. 

> 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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> 
>