The problem with the social interaction arguments is the massive
environmental cost.
It's about 22,000 km round trip from either NW USA or West Europe to
Buenos Aires, Argentina for example.
Depending on the calculator you use, that's about 4 tonnes of CO2 for
the round trip. The world target by 2030 is 2.1 tonnes per capita (Page
XXV - UN Environment Programme report -
https://wedocs.unep.org/xmlui/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/34426/EGR20.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
). So that's about two-person years of CO2 emissions for a ~4 day
conference.
This is why I ask what actual benefits "networking" provides. It's not
part of an anti-social crusade, it's because "business as usual" for us
means "our grandparents screwed everything up for us" in a few
generations. Jetting around the planet has a real-world cost even if
it's one that's invisible to most of us right now.
We take our ability to jet around the globe by air for granted but
forget that just 90 years ago it was impossible. Literally. The (turbo)
jet hadn't been invented. And even today, the vast vast majority (> 90%,
probably much higher) of the world's population never fly in a given
year (
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/how-much-worlds-population-has-flown-airplane-180957719/
).
> I think if a group of individuals[1], or several groups, want to put
forward proposals for the conference to be located in "Cyberspace"[2]
then that should not be disallowed, and then its up to the conference
committee to consider it fairly according to the criteria for selection.
On the surface, this is a good idea, but unfortunately it has a
fundamental problem:
There are no "criteria for selection" of the conference beyond "the
committee members voted for this proposal". There's zero transparency in
the process.
It strikes me that there is another advantage to the online setup, one
that solves a very real recurring problem of the in-person conferences:
Repeatability.
Currently every conference starts from scratch; the new LOC has to
figure everything out for themselves and all the knowledge from the old
LOC is lost (although they do usually try to help with the transition).
However, with an online conference, once the tooling is setup for the
first one it would seem the burden to create the later ones would be
much lower, and you'd benefit from possibly having some LOC members do
it multiple times allowing the transfer for institutional knowledge.
(And no, for a whole host of reasons, I'm not the person to put forth
any formal proposal)
On 2022-01-12 15:52, Barry Rowlingson via Discuss wrote:
I think if a group of individuals[1], or several groups, want to put
forward proposals for the conference to be located in "Cyberspace"[2]
then that should not be disallowed, and then its up to the conference
committee to consider it fairly according to the criteria for selection.
Barry
[1] Not me
[2] But not "the metaverse". Just No.
On Wed, Jan 12, 2022 at 3:45 PM Michael Smith via Discuss
<discuss@lists.osgeo.org> wrote:
This email originated outside the University. Check before
clicking links or attachments.
I would say that its probably best to think about Hybrid, as this
is what is happening for 2022. Essentially you are both right,
there are pluses and minuses to each. And we want to support both
going forward as there isn’t going to be an approach that works
for everyone. Future FOSS4Gs will probably all part virtual and
in-person.
Note this is my personal opinion.
Mike
--
Michael Smith
US Army Corps / Remote Sensing GIS Center
On 1/12/22, 10:28 AM, "Discuss on behalf of Iván Sánchez Ortega
via Discuss" <discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.org on behalf of
discuss@lists.osgeo.org> wrote:
El miércoles, 12 de enero de 2022 15:26:05 (CET) Jonathan
Moules via Discuss
escribió:
> > we really hope that FOSS4G2023 can be safely
> > organized in physical format.
>
> Why?
Because we humans are social animals; and people like me, who
are almost
completely burnt out by not having been outside of their
houses for nearly two
years, could really use an in-person event to see their
friends and their
personal heroes.
I'm not gonna attack Jonathan's points (or even reply to them,
risking an
episode of sealioning to erode my patience), but I want to
make one of my own:
It's good for our collective mental health. We *want* an in
person event, we
*hope* for it; which for me is a sign our brains have some
demand for it, even
if it's intangible.
--
Iván Sánchez Ortega <i...@sanchezortega.es>
https://ivan.sanchezortega.es
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