[Australia] Conf Bid

[Tim Bowden]

On Wed, 2007-07-18 at 16:21 -0700, Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo) wrote:
> On 18-Jul-07, at 3:41 PM, Cameron Shorter wrote:
> 
> > So if the conference is held in the Australasian region this year,  
> > Sydney won't get the conference in '09. (I've heard rumours that  
> > there will be a bid from somewhere in the Pacific).
> 
> Greetings from across the Pacific,
> I just chatted with one of the ones I thought might put in a bid for  
> Fiji, but sounds 99% sure they won't be putting in anything.  So I  
> don't think you'll have anything to worry about from that angle.  The 

OK, if they are going to defer till '09 or drop out completely, we can
feel confident competing with that.

>  
> other bids this year will likely be from Brazil and South Africa.  I  
> haven't heard of any others.  I think Brazil's bid will be quite well  
> organised but am not sure about the status of the South African one.   
> I suspect that with the support you guys have, you could pull off a  
> good bid for 2008 and that it could easily end up you vs. Brazil.   
> That's my personal perspective from my lurking observations, but  
> thought you might appreciate it.
> 

Precisely what I'm a little concerned about.  Despite what our bid docs
may end up saying, we /don't/ want to win in '08.  We've had a few off
list discussions about how we can answer the OSGeo charter for our wider
region, and feel we have some real cracker ideas.  We would like to set
a benchmark that will be considered hard to beat for some years to come.
We can't do that for '08, and I don't like the idea of holding a conf
that's less than what we could do.  Maybe we need to pepper our bid docs
with phrases like "when we re-bid for '09 we will be able to improve
xyz..." and so on.

Our main aim in bidding for '08 will be to signal our intentions for '09
and indicate that we are already getting our ducks lined up as it were.
When concom considers our '09 bid they will know we have been putting
serious effort into getting it right and all going well it will be so
good nobody else will stand a chance.  Maybe we're being a bit too
competitive but I don't thing we (OSGeo) deserve anything less than the
best possible job we (Aust-NZ) can do.

At the moment we still have some significant issue for actually running
something in '08.  We still need to get some more manpower on the
ground, we need to get some more dialogue happening with educational
institutions and engaging students in relevant disciplines (If you're
cynical think volunteer fodder for the conf). We still need to find a
way to answer the needs of our NZ chapter members- At the moment I can't
help feeling they are being drowned out by weight of numbers, at least
in terms of perspective they can bring to the chapter (rather than by
noise, as this has not been an overly verbose list!).  In short, we have
too much to do and too little time before Sept '08 to do justice to a
conf.

> For what it's worth,
> Tyler

For what it's worth,
Tim