On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 10:39 PM, David Fawcett <[email protected]> wrote: > It is definitely understandable that it is OSGEO's mission to spread > the conferences around the globe to reach everyone, not just North > America and Europe. That said, whether they are supported by OSGEO or > not, I think that there is a significant need for some US/North > America events to bring together both existing OS Geospatial people > and people who are not currently using OS Geospatial tools. I > actually love to see a Midwest US get together (Madison, Puneet?) > > I am thinking of events at cheaper venues, less formal, etc. Working > in state government in a state with a projected $5 Billion, some > colleagues just had a request to take a state car to Duluth (~120 > miles) for a public meeting turned down. The state won't be sending > me anywhere, so I will be paying out of pocket.
Likewise, I know there are a number of people who are effectively hobbyists in this space, and un or underemployed at that, who would participate on their own dime, but flying to Barcelona is pretty much right out. A trip to Denver, at least, would be vaguely feasible. > I think that it will be important to have some events to rev up people > in North America in the next few years, while the FOSS4G events are > away. With the current fiscal problems for government and industry in > the US, there is definitely an opportunity to use the cost-savings > angle to have the opportunity to show people the quality and > performance of some OS GIS projects. At the same time ESRI is cutting > enterprise license deals with state and regional governments, which > will give organizations no financial incentive to give OS GIS products > an audition. (Not that OS GIS is just a competition against > proprietary companies...) I'd argue the way OS GIS products are most likely to find their way in the door is as government units turn over personnel and get new employees who are already familiar with the tools, that is to say, virally, at least, unless some way of better promoting the open source tools reveals itself in the near future. My participation in other areas of open source and several recent conferences suggest areas where commercial tools are immature or inadequate, or where the pricing keeps them out of the hands of small players, are the ripe ones, and there's certainly some of that in play here. It's just a matter of figuring out how to exploit it. Derrick _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://geowanking.org/mailman/listinfo/geowanking_geowanking.org
