RE: [OSGeo-Discuss] Re: Local Chapter, network and structuration
Your points were excellently made Puneet, and I agree with them. Landon -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of P Kishor Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2008 1:28 AM To: OSGeo Discussions Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Re: Local Chapter, network and structuration On 8/27/08, Landon Blake [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Puneet wrote: a conference becomes too big to continue being useful. Do you mean too big as in number of people attending, too big as in number of topics presented, or too big in some other sense? To an extent, the above three senses are synonymous... Too many people attending is a good indicator of the health of the community, but makes interaction difficult. The number and quality of interactions doesn't increase as the size of the gathering increases -- in fact, one tends to mix/stay with the people one knows if the gathering becomes too big, the large size almost acting as a deterrent for accidental or even purposeful making of new connections. Nevertheless, it is hard to complain about this sense without sounding petty. Too many topics being presented is a major problem because one is torn between the sessions as they are juggled and scheduled in a fixed number days leading to many interesting sessions being held concurrently. I have often thought that the best conference would be one in which I could attend all the sessions without missing any, if I so wanted to... which really means no concurrent sessions at all. When sessions are arranged in distinct tracks, this problem alleviates to some degree, but the tracks have to be sufficiently disparate and different -- for example, OSCON has separate Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP tracks... since I am a Perl guy, I can happily chose to miss the other tracks. However, if there is a parallel JavaScript or Apache track as well, then I am screwed, because as a web developer JS/Apache are central to my development needs. Making such distinct tracks becomes difficult in a FOSS4G/MUM type conference... I am interested in mostly everything, so missing out on good sessions is not good. To some extent, too many topics being presented is a function of too many people presenting is a function of too many people attending. To attract too many people, the conference has to have too many presentations, has to program too big and exotic social gatherings, has to rent too big a conference space, has to advertise too much to reach too many people in the first place, has to raise the price of registration too high to recoup the money... all this is inter-related. The next organizer seeks to outdo the previous one, and the cycle continues even stronger. I guess somewhere in this is the cost of marketing the conference directly that started some of this conversation in the first place. From the first MUM1 (still my favorite gathering of all... we were all new to each other, and meeting for the first time, we were putting faces to names... it was like a family separated at birth meeting for the first time... sniff... I am getting sentimental) which was small and unassuming and cost about $100 or so in registration, and I believe about $45 or so for rooms at the local Days Inn (I believe there were also some dorm rooms available) to the next month's conference in Cape Town that has a registration fee $500, it has been a high jump. Focused on consciously keeping the conference cheap, small, and friendly seems contrarian to the notion of success in a Darwinian evolutionary sense, but whatever will be will be. Conferences will grow, and some of its audience will get turned off and turn to other venues and avenues... and so, it shall come to pass. Landon -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of P Kishor Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2008 3:56 PM To: OSGeo Discussions Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Re: Local Chapter, network and structuration On 8/27/08, Dave Patton [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 2008/08/26 3:08 PM, James Fee wrote: I overheard someone say at GeoWeb 2008 that they could care less about FOSS4G outside of North America and they have no interest in what will probably be the next couple FOSS4Gs around the world. Hearing things like that, and the reactions about it being 'impossible' for USA state and local government employees, etc., make me wonder if there is any value in having the organizing committees of 'foreign' OSGeo events doing any marketing directly to such people. I wonder what is the cost of marketing directly to me? I wonder what is marketing directly to me? I don't remember seeing an what seemed like a paid ad for any MUM/FOSS4G conference in a paper magazine or also on a web site? Just curious. By the way, I am not a State/Local/Fed employee, yet, I too have little interest in these overseas, high-cost conferences, at least as long as I have no funding support
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Re: Local Chapter, network and structuration
On 2008/08/26 3:08 PM, James Fee wrote: I overheard someone say at GeoWeb 2008 that they could care less about FOSS4G outside of North America and they have no interest in what will probably be the next couple FOSS4Gs around the world. Hearing things like that, and the reactions about it being 'impossible' for USA state and local government employees, etc., make me wonder if there is any value in having the organizing committees of 'foreign' OSGeo events doing any marketing directly to such people. The glass half empty view would be that such marketing is 'a waste of time and money', because such people either aren't personally interested, or their workplace has policies that won't allow them to attend. The glass half full view is that by directly marketing to such people (who might want to self-identify, to make sure they are on the relevant 'marketing lists') they get the opportunity to have discussions with their supervisor(s), and that if, over time, enough people raise the issue enough times, along with examples of how other jurisdictions get value from sending their staff to 'foreign events', maybe things will change. -- Dave Patton CIS Canadian Information Systems Victoria, B.C. Degree Confluence Project: Canadian Coordinator Technical Coordinator http://www.confluence.org/ OSGeo FOSS4G2007 conference: Workshop Committee Chair Conference Committee member http://www.foss4g2007.org/ Personal website: Maps, GPS, etc. http://members.shaw.ca/davepatton/ ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
RE: [OSGeo-Discuss] Re: Local Chapter, network and structuration
Puneet wrote: a conference becomes too big to continue being useful. Do you mean too big as in number of people attending, too big as in number of topics presented, or too big in some other sense? Landon -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of P Kishor Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2008 3:56 PM To: OSGeo Discussions Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Re: Local Chapter, network and structuration On 8/27/08, Dave Patton [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 2008/08/26 3:08 PM, James Fee wrote: I overheard someone say at GeoWeb 2008 that they could care less about FOSS4G outside of North America and they have no interest in what will probably be the next couple FOSS4Gs around the world. Hearing things like that, and the reactions about it being 'impossible' for USA state and local government employees, etc., make me wonder if there is any value in having the organizing committees of 'foreign' OSGeo events doing any marketing directly to such people. I wonder what is the cost of marketing directly to me? I wonder what is marketing directly to me? I don't remember seeing an what seemed like a paid ad for any MUM/FOSS4G conference in a paper magazine or also on a web site? Just curious. By the way, I am not a State/Local/Fed employee, yet, I too have little interest in these overseas, high-cost conferences, at least as long as I have no funding support for them. I do suspect that at some point, at least for me personally, a conference becomes too big to continue being useful. The glass half empty view would be that such marketing is 'a waste of time and money', because such people either aren't personally interested, or their workplace has policies that won't allow them to attend. The glass half full view is that by directly marketing to such people (who might want to self-identify, to make sure they are on the relevant 'marketing lists') they get the opportunity to have discussions with their supervisor(s), and that if, over time, enough people raise the issue enough times, along with examples of how other jurisdictions get value from sending their staff to 'foreign events', maybe things will change. -- Dave Patton CIS Canadian Information Systems Victoria, B.C. Degree Confluence Project: Canadian Coordinator Technical Coordinator http://www.confluence.org/ OSGeo FOSS4G2007 conference: Workshop Committee Chair Conference Committee member http://www.foss4g2007.org/ Personal website: Maps, GPS, etc. http://members.shaw.ca/davepatton/ ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss -- Puneet Kishor http://punkish.eidesis.org/ Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies http://www.nelson.wisc.edu/ Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) http://www.osgeo.org/ ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss Warning: Information provided via electronic media is not guaranteed against defects including translation and transmission errors. If the reader is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this information in error, please notify the sender immediately. ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss