People at FOSS4G

[Arnulf Christl]

Jo Walsh wrote:
> dear all, 
> 
> There are a couple of people who I wish I could find some kind of
> financial support for to travel to FOSS4G and EuroOSCON who would be
> reallu useful to have there and are doing good work for open source
> geospatial and OSGeo. I don't know whether it would be appropriate for
> the foundation to have a travel grant fund - it might be a bit
> hard to get sponsorship for. I'm thinking something very limited for
> people who really could benefit from the support. Or if this is a
> mechanism we could establish and use soon enough in time for these
> events. 
> 
> I see in the budget there is a slot for "Promotional travel"(18KUSD) and 
> i think that is what this would constitute. One of the people i have in
> mind is working a lot on FDO and would be a poster child at EuroOSCON 
> for open source community interexchange with MapGuide. The other is
> a whiz kid working on GeoRSS who had a paper accepted at FOSS4G but
> is in the very rural midwest and it's a big expense. He could come and
> make lots of interesting mashup stuff, sitting around on the booth there. 
> 
> We're in a position to support / release funds for this sort of thing? 
> Or if this is a bit widespread or too soon, can anyone suggest how
> these people *might* find travel support from other organisations?
> 
> cheers,
> 
> 
> jo

Hi,
the response from projects to help staff booths at FOSS4G and EuroOSCON 
has been near void. As Visibility is one of the key missions of OSGeo I 
would very much support tapping into our VisCom budget to get people 
help staff the booth.

Besides that it gives us a good chance to integrate those people to our 
goals individually. I'll be hanging around the booth all the time 
anyway. People who had a chance to profit from OSGeo are better 
volunteers. As we can see the bulk of work in OSGeo is done by a few, we 
need to get more. Paying people full time is one way to do it, giving 
incentives is easier and does not bind any money we don't have yet.

btw: I have heard lots of "oh why are we only a volunteer organization" 
  moans. There is some educating reading regarding the definition of 
volunteer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volunteer which might help to 
understand why volunteers are the best thing that can happen to us from 
a governance and long term visionary perspective. Especially in highly 
automized societies volunteer work is becoming more and more 
important... sorry, I am rambling.

I must confess that results from requests for support so far have been 
disappointing (volunteers suck), even switching gender did not help (or 
shied them away :-).

Gary,
if you feel you cannot hit reply immediately, I would like to bring in a 
motion at the next board meeting to use ~2.5k from the travel budget to 
be spent for travel costs for volunteers at the FOSS4G and EuroOSCON 
booths. (is that enough, Jo? Can you get more precise numbers?)

Regards,
Arnulf (aka Seven)