Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] [Board] OSGeo Board Priorities
On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 7:33 AM, Paolo Cavallini cavall...@faunalia.it wrote: On the other hand, I still have problems with annual FOSS4G, which has a cost that scares away many top developers. IMHO (sorry to insist, I raised this point earlier) the meeting should be free for developers (committers to OSGeo projects), and more expensive for businessman. Its common practice in academic circles to have one price for academics and another for non-academics at workshops and conferences. But then its fairly easy to confirm who is and who isn't an academic (by requesting the info from the academic institution). FOSS4G 2013 in Nottingham will have a number of academic bursaies for students, which is another way to enable access to the conference. The problem with making FOSS4G cheaper (I think free would be too much) for developers would be deciding who was a developer. Now, this could all be done by OSGeo making available a number of developer bursaries. This would nominally come out of the profit margin from the conference, but since it would be paid out by OSGeo it wouldn't affect the local committee's accounting. OSGeo would then be responsible for handling applications and deciding who gets it. Would anyone on the OSGeo board like to think about doing that for FOSS4G 2013? A small number (10) of developer bursaries? The net cash flow should be from business to GFOSS promotion, not drawing from our precious developers. Agreed, but a lot of the developers do now work for businesses! Which is great. We've always known that Open Source is 'Free' as in speech, not Free as in beer, and that conference cost for a developer who works for a business can get passed along to the customers (indirectly, I'm not saying you invoice them for Going To The Very Wonderful FOSS4G Nottingham Conference). Barry ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] [Board] OSGeo Board Priorities
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Il 04/03/2013 09:06, Barry Rowlingson ha scritto: The problem with making FOSS4G cheaper (I think free would be too much) why? I do not see an issue here. If I wear my businessman het, I'd be happy to pay also for developers participation (it's meeting real developers that makes the conference so interesting and unique, compared with proprietary stuff). I know for sure many top developers are not coming, and that makes FOSS4G less interesting that it could be. for developers would be deciding who was a developer. easy: regular committers of OSGeo projects. All the best, and thanks for your thoughts. - -- Paolo Cavallini - Faunalia www.faunalia.eu Full contact details at www.faunalia.eu/pc Nuovi corsi QGIS e PostGIS: http://www.faunalia.it/calendario -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAlE0VzsACgkQ/NedwLUzIr6YPgCffLTFdZgsFSRc9398OMN/fwgJ IqoAnRFlAjFGiFTRk8bblq7JRIzMihwC =aG3G -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] [Board] OSGeo Board Priorities
Hi, I fully agree, that the costs for individuals or small company are very heigh. I'm aware, you were mentioning this issue already. Since I know, FOSS4G-Global is the main source of income to OSGeo, I did not raise any obligation so far - I have no clue, how to organize this better for the future. Paolo's idea sounds not bad: having some kind of scholarship program, where we could allocate some money for people who can not come but it's valuable to have them there. Do we have some priorities for FOSS4G as well? In general, when I'm discussing this topic with people, general feelings are, that FOSS4G-Global is very developer-oriented meeting, compared e.g. to FOSSGIS (German local conference), which would be more user or business oriented (correct me if I'm wrong, it is a while, I was there). Having priorities of the FOSS4G-global could also point us the the answer, whether we should financially support developers to come or not. Jachym Dne 4.3.2013 08:33, Paolo Cavallini napsal(a): Il 04/03/2013 00:44, Cameron Shorter ha scritto: A productive virtual meeting of the OSGeo Board http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Board_Meeting_2013-02-26 resulted in general consensus over OSGeo's priorities, which in turn should help the OSGeo Board and OSGeo committees when guiding OSGeo into the future. These principles are: * OSGeo should act as a low capital, volunteer focused organisation. * OSGeo should focus support on OSGeo communities and initiatives which support themselves. Hi all. Thanks for this. I welcome this change, that I think will make OSGeo much more effective in promoting free and open source geospatial software. On the other hand, I still have problems with annual FOSS4G, which has a cost that scares away many top developers. IMHO (sorry to insist, I raised this point earlier) the meeting should be free for developers (committers to OSGeo projects), and more expensive for businessman. The net cash flow should be from business to GFOSS promotion, not drawing from our precious developers. All the best. ___ Board mailing list bo...@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/board -- Jachym Cepicky Help Service - Remote Sensing s.r.o. jachym.cepi...@gmail.com HS-RS: jac...@hsrs.cz http://bnhelp.cz http://les-ejk.cz signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] [Board] OSGeo Board Priorities
Dear all, I would define me more a user than a developer so my feelings are surely biased toward a more user oriented FOSS4G event. I feel that one of the main aim of FOSS4G, maybe the biggest one, should be the possibility for users to exchange their experiences and learn by looking at what others are doing. I quoted the users word as I would like to use it in the wider sense, i.e. including people developing and custominzing OSGeo sw, using them and or promoting. A too strongly developer oriented event could minimize the impact that FOSS4G event can have on spreading the word of open GIS. It could turn it in an hackfest, that is a very good event but I feel it would atract less people. So I would enjoy an effort form OSGeo to help some important people afford the event but I would also prefer it was not limited to developers. It could be nice if the OSGeo board will define some objectives criteria on which it can select valuable prposal to fund. Kind Regards, Stefano --- 41.95581N 12.52854E http://www.linkedin.com/in/stefanoiacovella http://twitter.com/#!/Iacovellas 2013/3/4 Jachym Cepicky jachym.cepi...@gmail.com: Hi, I fully agree, that the costs for individuals or small company are very heigh. I'm aware, you were mentioning this issue already. Since I know, FOSS4G-Global is the main source of income to OSGeo, I did not raise any obligation so far - I have no clue, how to organize this better for the future. Paolo's idea sounds not bad: having some kind of scholarship program, where we could allocate some money for people who can not come but it's valuable to have them there. Do we have some priorities for FOSS4G as well? In general, when I'm discussing this topic with people, general feelings are, that FOSS4G-Global is very developer-oriented meeting, compared e.g. to FOSSGIS (German local conference), which would be more user or business oriented (correct me if I'm wrong, it is a while, I was there). Having priorities of the FOSS4G-global could also point us the the answer, whether we should financially support developers to come or not. Jachym Dne 4.3.2013 08:33, Paolo Cavallini napsal(a): Il 04/03/2013 00:44, Cameron Shorter ha scritto: A productive virtual meeting of the OSGeo Board http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Board_Meeting_2013-02-26 resulted in general consensus over OSGeo's priorities, which in turn should help the OSGeo Board and OSGeo committees when guiding OSGeo into the future. These principles are: * OSGeo should act as a low capital, volunteer focused organisation. * OSGeo should focus support on OSGeo communities and initiatives which support themselves. Hi all. Thanks for this. I welcome this change, that I think will make OSGeo much more effective in promoting free and open source geospatial software. On the other hand, I still have problems with annual FOSS4G, which has a cost that scares away many top developers. IMHO (sorry to insist, I raised this point earlier) the meeting should be free for developers (committers to OSGeo projects), and more expensive for businessman. The net cash flow should be from business to GFOSS promotion, not drawing from our precious developers. All the best. ___ Board mailing list bo...@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/board -- Jachym Cepicky Help Service - Remote Sensing s.r.o. jachym.cepi...@gmail.com HS-RS: jac...@hsrs.cz http://bnhelp.cz http://les-ejk.cz ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] FW: OSGeo Board Priorities
Cameron and 'The Board', Thanks for putting these thoughts together. This seems like a good strategic approach to take. Bruce *From: *Cameron Shorter cameron.shor...@gmail.com *Date: *Mon, 4 Mar 2013 10:44:42 +1100 *To: *OSGeo Discussions, OSGeo-Board List *Subject: *[OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo Board Priorities A productive virtual meeting of the OSGeo Board http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Board_Meeting_2013-02-26 resulted in general consensus over OSGeo's priorities, which in turn should help the OSGeo Board and OSGeo committees when guiding OSGeo into the future. These principles are: - OSGeo should act as a low capital, volunteer focused organisation. - OSGeo should focus support on OSGeo communities and initiatives which support themselves. Current priority areas include: - Global, regional and local FOSS4G related events, or events which include a FOSS4G stream. - Marketing OSGeo, which is currently focused around OSGeo-Live http://live.osgeo.org/ . - Education, which is currently focused around the network of Open Source Geospatial Research and Education Laboratories http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Edu_current_initiatives . - Local Chapters, as outreach initiatives are typically driven at the local level. So lets expand on these: *OSGeo as a low capital, volunteer focused organisation * Should OSGeo act as a high capital or low capital organisation? I.e., should OSGeo dedicate energy to collecting sponsorship and then passing out these funds to worthy OSGeo causes. While initially it seems attractive to have OSGeo woe sponsors, because we would all love to have more money to throw at worthy OSGeo goals, the reality is that chasing money is hard work. And someone who can chase OSGeo sponsorship is likely conflicted with chasing sponsorship for their particular workplace. So in practice, to be effective in chasing sponsorship, OSGeo will probably need to hire someone specifically for the role. OSGeo would then need to raise at least enough to cover wages, and then quite a bit more if the sponsorship path is to create extra value. This high capital path is how the Eclipse foundation is set up, and how LocationTech propose to organise themselves. It is the path that OSGeo started following when founded under the umbrella of Autodesk. However, over the last seven years, OSGeo has slowly evolved toward a low capital volunteer focused organisation. Our overheads are very low, which means we waste very little of our volunteer labour and capital on the time consuming task of chasing and managing money. Consequently, any money we do receive (from conference windfalls or sponsorship) goes a long way - as it doesn't get eaten up by high overheads. As discussed and agreed by the board, this low capital path is something that is working very well for us, and is the path we should continue to follow. *Support initiatives which support themselves * With the thousands of great initiatives and opportunities that OSGeo could get involved in, and limited budget, how should OSGeo set funding priorities? Acknowledging that our volunteer community is blessed with many talented individuals, our most effective way to tap into community potential is to welcome individuals to help scratch their itch. Extending on this, funding priorities should follow the *actions* of already successful communities. (Note the difference between talk and action). If a task or project is important enough, it will attract volunteers and/or sponsors to make it happen. In practice, this will usually equate to providing co-contributions rather than outright funding. OSGeo's focus should be on initiatives which are of value to all or most OSGeo projects, and to get best value for our limited budget, OSGeo should target initiatives which have high value with minimal investment. With that in mind our priorities should be: - Cover the costs of running OSGeo: Bank fees, insurance, infrastructure, hosting etc. - Support marketing and out reach activities, with a primary focus on our FOSS4G global conference, followed by regional and then local FOSS4G or related events. - Educational type activities are a high priority, but likely will be a minimal cost activity from OSGeo's perspective. - Other initiatives which fit our priorities, as suggested by membership. Initiatives which probably wouldn't quality: - Sponsoring core development of a particular project. (Too expensive, and only supports one project) - OSGeo speaker travel expenses, or booth registration costs at a conference. (If conferences/local community feel this is important, they will either: 1. pay for the keynote, 2. make use of local talent, 3. waive fees for our non-profit, 4. find a local sponsor) *Conferences and related events * Conferences are financially risky events. They need to be planned well in advance, and you are never sure how many people will turn up, or whether some global
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Free Developer Slots at FOSS4G events: [was RE: FW: [Board] OSGeo Board Priorities]
To add to what Bruce just wrote, unless you happen to live in the region where FOSS4G is being held a given year, then the cost of traveling to FOSS4G (flight/train, hotel, meals, etc.) is much more significant than the registration cost and very likely a bigger show stopper for those who cannot afford to go. I am all for trying to make the event more accessible and keeping the registration costs as low as possible, for instance by choosing more affordable venues, but I am not convinced that free registration passes would make much of a difference when you take into acount the other travel costs and most importantly the complications introduced by an arbitrary selection process. My 0.02$ Daniel On 13-03-04 6:15 PM, Bruce Bannerman wrote: (Wearing my former FOSS4G Conference organiser hat) Paolo and Jachym, This is an issue that comes up on a fairly regular basis. To be honest, as a person who has attended a number of spatial conferences, I must say that the costs for the average FOSS4G international conference are very reasonable and compare very favourably with similar events. They also represent excellent value for money when you think of the typical breadth and high quality of presentations. As a conference organiser, there is a great deal of pressure on ensuring a financially viable conference. It is not until the very last stages of the planning for the event that you start to get an understanding of how many people have actually committed to attend the event, and whether you will cover your costs for the event. There is a cost, even for 'free' slots. Think of meals, drinks and lost revenue opportunities to cover conference costs. So if a lot of free slots are given to developers and the conference fails to attract sufficient delegates to cover the conference costs, who pays for the short fall in funds that the conference has committed to? Do the volunteer local organisers pay out of their own pocket? Does OSGeo? We (FOSS4G-2009) did look at the idea of have a 'few' slots available for developers who had done an outstanding job for the community. But who would select these people? What would be the eligibility criteria? What process would be used that would allow an open and auditable selection of recipients? How would other hard working developers feel if they missed out on a free slot? What then would the impact be on the community and on the FOSS4G conference? So in the end, we decided out of fairness for all developers that we would not offer free slots for developers. So in summary: * FOSS4G events are good value for money and not overly expensive. * It does not make financial sense to provide a lot of free places for developers at FOSS4G conferences. If there are insufficient funds to cover the substantial conference costs, who pays? Bruce -- Forwarded Message *From: *Jachym Cepicky *Date: *Mon, 4 Mar 2013 20:59:14 +1100 *To: *cavallini http://cavall...@faunalia.it *Cc: *OSGeo Discussions , OSGeo-Board List *Subject: *Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] [Board] OSGeo Board Priorities Hi, I fully agree, that the costs for individuals or small company are very heigh. I'm aware, you were mentioning this issue already. Since I know, FOSS4G-Global is the main source of income to OSGeo, I did not raise any obligation so far - I have no clue, how to organize this better for the future. Paolo's idea sounds not bad: having some kind of scholarship program, where we could allocate some money for people who can not come but it's valuable to have them there. Do we have some priorities for FOSS4G as well? In general, when I'm discussing this topic with people, general feelings are, that FOSS4G-Global is very developer-oriented meeting, compared e.g. to FOSSGIS (German local conference), which would be more user or business oriented (correct me if I'm wrong, it is a while, I was there). Having priorities of the FOSS4G-global could also point us the the answer, whether we should financially support developers to come or not. Jachym Dne 4.3.2013 08:33, Paolo Cavallini napsal(a): Il 04/03/2013 00:44, Cameron Shorter ha scritto: A productive virtual meeting of the OSGeo Board http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Board_Meeting_2013-02-26 resulted in general consensus over OSGeo's priorities, which in turn should help the OSGeo Board and OSGeo committees when guiding OSGeo into the future. These principles are: * OSGeo should act as a low capital, volunteer focused organisation. * OSGeo should focus support on OSGeo communities and initiatives which support themselves. Hi all. Thanks for this. I welcome this change, that I think will make OSGeo much more effective in promoting free and open source geospatial software. On the other hand, I still have problems with annual FOSS4G, which has a cost
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Free Developer Slots at FOSS4G events: [was RE: FW: [Board] OSGeo Board Priorities]
Jachym / Bruce / Paolo, There is certainly a difference in the pricing between FOSS4G and some of the smaller scrappier conferences but by comparison to other professional conferences it is certainly reasonably priced. Bruce - in the past workshop presenters would get free entrance for the conference. Is that the case this year? I feel like that was often a way for core community contributors to get in free while adding a very serious added value to the conference. I am interested in ways that we could make it easier / cheaper for core contributors to attend. Just by being there they add value to the conference, and the conference exists in part to serve the project contributors. Possibly a scheme were each formal OSGeo project could nominate two or three contributors to attend at the student rate? Note that I'm not suggesting it would necessarily apply this year but if we can come up with a palatable scheme we could write it into the RFP for the future. Doing it at the student rate would at least help avoid the conference being out-of-pocket for too much. Best regards, Frank On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 3:15 PM, Bruce Bannerman bruce.bannerman.os...@gmail.com wrote: (Wearing my former FOSS4G Conference organiser hat) Paolo and Jachym, This is an issue that comes up on a fairly regular basis. To be honest, as a person who has attended a number of spatial conferences, I must say that the costs for the average FOSS4G international conference are very reasonable and compare very favourably with similar events. They also represent excellent value for money when you think of the typical breadth and high quality of presentations. As a conference organiser, there is a great deal of pressure on ensuring a financially viable conference. It is not until the very last stages of the planning for the event that you start to get an understanding of how many people have actually committed to attend the event, and whether you will cover your costs for the event. There is a cost, even for 'free' slots. Think of meals, drinks and lost revenue opportunities to cover conference costs. So if a lot of free slots are given to developers and the conference fails to attract sufficient delegates to cover the conference costs, who pays for the short fall in funds that the conference has committed to? Do the volunteer local organisers pay out of their own pocket? Does OSGeo? We (FOSS4G-2009) did look at the idea of have a 'few' slots available for developers who had done an outstanding job for the community. But who would select these people? What would be the eligibility criteria? What process would be used that would allow an open and auditable selection of recipients? How would other hard working developers feel if they missed out on a free slot? What then would the impact be on the community and on the FOSS4G conference? So in the end, we decided out of fairness for all developers that we would not offer free slots for developers. So in summary: - FOSS4G events are good value for money and not overly expensive. - It does not make financial sense to provide a lot of free places for developers at FOSS4G conferences. If there are insufficient funds to cover the substantial conference costs, who pays? Bruce -- Forwarded Message *From: *Jachym Cepicky *Date: *Mon, 4 Mar 2013 20:59:14 +1100 *To: *cavallini http://cavall...@faunalia.it *Cc: *OSGeo Discussions , OSGeo-Board List *Subject: *Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] [Board] OSGeo Board Priorities Hi, I fully agree, that the costs for individuals or small company are very heigh. I'm aware, you were mentioning this issue already. Since I know, FOSS4G-Global is the main source of income to OSGeo, I did not raise any obligation so far - I have no clue, how to organize this better for the future. Paolo's idea sounds not bad: having some kind of scholarship program, where we could allocate some money for people who can not come but it's valuable to have them there. Do we have some priorities for FOSS4G as well? In general, when I'm discussing this topic with people, general feelings are, that FOSS4G-Global is very developer-oriented meeting, compared e.g. to FOSSGIS (German local conference), which would be more user or business oriented (correct me if I'm wrong, it is a while, I was there). Having priorities of the FOSS4G-global could also point us the the answer, whether we should financially support developers to come or not. Jachym Dne 4.3.2013 08:33, Paolo Cavallini napsal(a): Il 04/03/2013 00:44, Cameron Shorter ha scritto: A productive virtual meeting of the OSGeo Board http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Board_Meeting_2013-02-26 resulted in general consensus over OSGeo's priorities, which in turn should help the OSGeo Board and OSGeo committees when guiding OSGeo into the future. These principles are: * OSGeo should act as a low capital, volunteer focused organisation.
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] [Foss4g2013] Your weekly dose of FOSS4G 2013 News
Hi Jeff, I just wanted to mention the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team is planning a hackweek for the weekdays in between (9th-13th of September)(1) . We are still in the early planning stages. I think it would be a great opportunity for developers, GIS specialists, documentation writers or others to come together and work on solutions for humanitarian response and disaster preparedness. Best, -Kate (1) https://hackpad.com/HOT-House-2013-lm1cEL25GKl On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 11:41 PM, Jeffrey Johnson ortel...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Jo et al, I'm curious what (if any) current thinking there is on some joint activities with the State of the Map conference attendees. Its a bit sad that these events are so far apart temporally yet close spatially, but I think there will be a pretty significant overlap and it makes sense (to me at least) to try and do some activities together. I've personally been preparing a set of workshops that includes a set of modules on using OSM data with FOSS4G tools and I think this kind of thing is really powerful and something we should be explicitly promoting some how. Jeff Johnson OpenGeo On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 8:18 AM, Jo Cook joc...@astuntechnology.com wrote: Dear All, For those that haven't already spotted this on twitter (cue big fanfare...) registration for FOSS4G 2013 is now open! Early Bird Closes on 31st May, and there's a limited number of the on-site hotel rooms, so get in quick! See http://2013.foss4g.org/registration/ for all you need to know about the process. There are links to information about UK visas, and travel at http://2013.foss4g.org/map/information/ and http://2013.foss4g.org/map/travel/ but if you need any help then just give one of the committee a shout. The call for presentations and workshops is also open- at http://2013.foss4g.org/programme/call-for-papers/, closing 31st March, and our free hackathon on the 16th and 17th September is also up on eventbrite http://hackathonfoss4g2013-es2005.eventbrite.com/?rank=1 We're just in the process of booking some really cool entertainment and after-dinner speakers, so come on, what are you waiting for? Jo -- Jo Cook Astun Technology Ltd, The Coach House, 17 West Street, Epsom, Surrey, KT18 7RL, UK t:+44 750 095 8167 iShare - Data integration and publishing platform * Company registration no. 5410695. Registered in England and Wales. Registered office: 120 Manor Green Road, Epsom, Surrey, KT19 8LN VAT no. 864201149. ___ Foss4g2013 mailing list foss4g2...@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foss4g2013 ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
