[Marketing] How should OSGeo Marketing spend $10K

[Daniel Morissette]

Hi Cameron, all,

I'll answer with two different hats:

1- As a OSGeo community member who is also the lead of a local chapter:

My experience from trying to organize OSGeo's presence at events in the 
past is that DVDs/USBs/Stickers might be nice to give away, but to make 
a real impact, you'd need a couple of simple flyers that explain 
efficiently what OSGeo is about, what it does, and why visitors should 
care about it. This was a blocker for us (the Quebec chapter) and would 
be even more important than DVDs/USBs/Stickers and local groups don't 
have the time/resource/knowledge to prepare that.

If this material already exists then great, let's promote it and not 
focus solely on the DVDs. It's easy to send out a PDF to organizers that 
they can print locally at very low cost. As an active member of OSGeo I 
was not able to find anything relevant last time I checked, so we ended 
up abandoning our free OSGeo booth due to lack of contents (and as the 
organizer of the rest of the event I didn't have time to work on that). 
If the material had existed in English we could have translated it, but 
I could not even find a relevant English flyer.

All this to say that personally I am questioning whether it is really 
worth sending out DVDs/USBs/Stickers to 50 - 100 events around the world 
when we are lacking a simple PDF in multiple languages that local people 
could print to hand out at a booth.

2- With my treasurer hat on:

Dozens or hundreds of micro-payments is clearly a no-go given the 
current setup (unfortunately).


Daniel


On 13-04-10 7:11 PM, Cameron Shorter wrote:
> In the Marketing Committee meeting today, we discussed how we would pay
> for distribution of DVDs/USBs/Stickers to 50 - 100 events around the
> world (at ~ $50 - $400 per event).
>
> Options floated:
> 1. Volunteer(s) coordinate the once off printing of 1000s of
> DVD/USB/stickers, then coordinate the posting to events. This will
> require volunteer(s) to step up and coordinate. Ideally, have a
> volunteer for each region. Downside, in some places we will print too
> many, sometimes not enough.
>
> 2. Events to coordinate printing of material for their own events in
> line with our sponsorship guidelines, then send a bill to OSGeo.
> Downside, the will result in lots of micro payments, along with
> associated time processing them.
>
> 3. Push the publishing and distributing to a printing provider.
> Downside, this will require someone to research options, and it will
> probably cost us more. It might still result in lots of micro payments
> (to the printer)
>
> Daniel, as OSGeo Treasurer, I'm interested to hear your thoughts.
> Others are also welcome to add suggestions.
>
> On 27/03/2013 8:23 AM, Cameron Shorter wrote:
>> In the recent OSGeo Budget [1], the marketing committee has been
>> allocated $10K, (up from $5K in 2012).
>> Specifically for: "General events support (starter kits, LiveDVD/USB
>> matching funds)".
>> This is in line with OSGeo principles [2]
>>
>>
>>       Packaging and Marketing
>>
>> OSGeo's marketing effort has primarily been focused around the
>> packaging and documentation efforts ofOSGeo-Live
>> <http://live.osgeo.org/>, and to a lesser extend,osgeo4w
>> <http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo4w/>. In 2012, OSGeo-Live was used at45
>> events <http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Live_GIS_History>without OSGeo's
>> financial support. It has been entirely driven by volunteer labour,
>> with 140 OSGeo-Live volunteers, and printing costs have been covered
>> by local events or sponsors.
>>
>> In the last couple of years, OSGeo has covered local chapter expenses
>> required to purchasenon-consumable items for conference booths
>> <http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Exhibition_Pack>(such as a retractable
>> banner).
>>
>> In moving forward, OSGeo hope to extend marketing reach by providing
>> co-contributions toward printing costs of consumable items at
>> conferences, such as toward OSGeo-Live DVDs.
>>
>>
>> So based upon this, I'd like to ask for suggestions on how we should
>> update marketing guidelines [3] on how funding should be allocated.
>>
>> Here is a rough suggestion for starting:
>> * Spatial related conferences can receive 100% funding for OSGeo-Live
>> DVD printing for 10% of expected conference attendees. (Ie, if 500
>> attendees, OSGeo will fund printing of 50 DVDs). [Estimated Value: (50
>> conferences) * (200 people attending) * 10% * ($2 / DVD) = $2,000.
>>
>> * Additionally, OSGeo will match sponsorship funds (up to $500) for
>> conference consumables (such as printing OSGeo-Live USBs - LOC to
>> decide how best to spend this). [Estimated Value: (15 conferences) *
>> $200 = $3,000].
>>
>> * Marketing pack for non-consumables continued to be allocated to LOCs
>> requesting it. [Value: 3 * $500 = $1,500]
>>
>> [1] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OSGeo_Budget_2013
>> [2]
>> http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Board_Meeting_2013-02-26#Conferences_and_related_events
>> [3]
>> http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Marketing_Committee#Current_Marketing_Activities
>> --
>> Cameron Shorter
>> Geospatial Solutions Manager
>> Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
>> Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254
>>
>> Think Globally, Fix Locally
>> Geospatial Solutions enhanced with Open Standards and Open Source
>> http://www.lisasoft.com
>
>
> --
> Cameron Shorter
> Geospatial Solutions Manager
> Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
> Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254
>
> Think Globally, Fix Locally
> Geospatial Solutions enhanced with Open Standards and Open Source
> http://www.lisasoft.com
>


-- 
Daniel Morissette
http://www.mapgears.com/
Provider of Professional MapServer Support since 2000