Frederik - Thank you for taking the time to write up your impressions (and for coming out to San Francisco in the first place) - this is really helpful for creating better conferences.
> tea, chocolate and delicate mini cakes during practially all the breaks ;) You can't beat that :) On the note of conferences - everyone check out State of the Map in Birmingham, I am looking forward to being there. http://2013.stateofthemap.org/ I also know there are still sponsorship opportunities, so get your employers to support a great OpenStreetMap conference! On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 4:35 PM, Frederik Ramm <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, > > this year I was at SOTM-US for the first time, and immediately > thereafter travelled to the German-language version of FOSS4G, the FOSSGIS > conference. There were lots of similarities - but also big contrasts. Below > is a personal comparison that might or might not be useful or interesting. > > Both conferences were about the same size. I think FOSSGIS had a few more > talks but SOTM-US had a few more visitors. Alas, FOSSGIS has three tracks > of which traditionally one is exclusively OSM and the others are about > other open source GIS stuff that might touch OSM but not necessarily so - > so the number of pure OSM talks was probably higher at SOTM-US. > > SOTM-US was held in San Francisco, the (Wikipedia) "leading financial and > cultural centre of Northern California" with about 800k inhabitants, and > FOSSGIS was held in Rapperswil, a town of 8,000 half an hour away from > Zurich, in Switzerland. Which might explain why at FOSSGIS we were greeted > by the mayor and the president of the university, who said that because his > university is on the shore of Lake Zurich, during the summer months he > occasionally feels like he's running a swimming pool and not a university. > > Surprisingly, public transport was excellent in both locations; getting to > the conference location from the airport was unproblematic. > > Both conferences covered their expenses through sponsorship, ticket sales, > and paid-for workshops. Both offered sponsors the option of setting up a > little booth. FOSSGIS has been doing that for a long time; for SOTM-US I > don't if this was new. At FOSSGIS, as a community member, my entry was free > but I was charged EUR 60 for the food and drink flat rate at the social > event (pre-dinner beers and dinner at a farm house in walking distance); at > SOTM-US, even speakers had to pay the US$75 ticket price but the social > events were essentially parties thrown by different companies and as such, > free of charge. The social event at FOSSGIS offered fantastic views over > Lake Zurich and the mountains beyond; the social events at SOTM-US allowed > one to catch a glimpse of what working for Stamen or Code for America is > like. (Both offices were very cool in their own way. Although I doubt > there's free beer during business hours.) On a third night, MapBox treated > us to drinks at a local bar. > > Sponsors were very unobtrusive at both conferences. I knew it was like > that at FOSSGIS but I was positively surprised by SOTM-US which, being held > in the Land of the Free and of Unfettered Market Capitalism, I had feared > might confront myself with much more sponsor messages than my European soul > could take. In the end it was not a problem at all (big thank you to the > sponsors at this point). > > Both conferences were held at universities, however SOTM-US was at a > proper conference centre, whereas for FOSSGIS we used the normal student > auditoriums. This has a certain tradition with FOSSGIS which is in many > respects a low-budget event and doesn't spend a lot of money on being > classy - if it is good enough for students then it is good enough for > FOSSGIS. Video recording was through volunteers at FOSSGIS, and through > paid professionals at SOTM-US; the FOSSGIS volunteers did an excellent job > but of course student auditoriums are not as well prepared for recording as > a conference centre. > > This year, for the first time since I can remember, FOSSGIS got the name > badges right - large font, on lanyards, dual sided. It used to be a running > gag with FOSSGIS about what would go wrong this time - either the font is > too small, or only one side is printed and it flips over all the time, or > whatnot. The name badges at SOTM-US were unremarkably professional - you > didn't even notice that everything was right about them. (Good designers > can probably tell a tale of this - if you do things just right, nobody will > notice.) > > One small thing that struck me as extremely useful at SOTM-US was the > programme booklet. Spring-bound, so you could easily have it flipped to the > right page for the current day and small enough to fit in your pocket - the > ideal utility for the conference nomad! FOSSGIS usually has a couple sheets > of copied paper which are no match to a neat booklet. Definitely worth > imitating. (FOSSGIS, to its defense, has a free, full-size, 140-page bound > volume of conference proceedings where basically every speaker presents > their topic on a couple written pages - which is certainly quite useful to > many, but while you're there, the schedule booklet beats that easily.) > > On the whole, FOSSGIS (even though the conference itself has been around > longer than OSM and much longer than any SOTM conference) still has a bit > of an amateur flair to it, but in a way I think that's intentional. There > may be many professionals there, but it isn't a professionally-run > conference, and I find that charming. SOTM-US is of course not a > professionaly-run conference either but it appears a little more like one. > > FOSSGIS is not a pure OSM event, and has many Open Source GIS types from > business and administration, but even so, I had the impression that the > number of OSM people whose interest in OSM is purely that of a hobbyist or > who are in it as mappers was higher at FOSSGIS than at SOTM-US; the latter > seemed to have a larger number of people from a professional background, > who often seemed to be there to learn about OSM and not because they were > already doing/using it. But that is just a superficial impression; I only > spoke to a fraction of people present. > > Because FOSSGIS has this Open Source focus, we do only in exceptional > cases allow presentations of non-open software there; whereas SOTM-US had > some makers of proprietary software tell us what they do with OSM. I'm a > bit on the fence about this; on the one hand, it is interesting to hear > what people do with OSM, and it strengthens the project if people use it, > but on the other hand if you come out of a talk where somebody told you how > they employ cool OSM tricks in their product but it is proprietary software > then there's nothing of this "cool, I'll have to play with that" feeling > that you often have in Open Source talks. > > On the other hand, the two-day hack event that followed immediately after > SOTM-US (I only participated on day 1) seemed like an excellent idea and > that's not something we've ever had at FOSSGIS. > > The biggest contrast between the two conferences was of course, as I said > initially, the surroundings; from (near) Silicon Valley to (near) the Swiss > Alps - walking through bustling San Francsisco streets to catch the BART, > and shortly thereafter finding yourself on a quiet commuter train along the > shore of Lake Zurich heading for another conference, is almost unreal for > someone whose life normally is somewhere between these extremes. But in a > way, the setting of either conference did match the spirit. At SOTM-US I > heard many people speak of short time frames, of things that need to (or > will) happen in the next couple of months, of change, of OSM being on the > doorstep of this or other, of business models quickly and radically > changing, and so on. At FOSSGIS, in contrast, things seemed much more > slowly paced, and people were talking about changes that would happen > "maybe 2014" - which one you prefer is certainly a matter of taste. SOTM-US > had more energy; FOSSGIS felt altogether more relaxed. > > Also, true to established stereotypes, our Swiss hosts served coffee, tea, > chocolate and delicate mini cakes during practially all the breaks ;) > > Thank you to all those who helped organise and run SOTM-US! > > Bye > Frederik > > -- > Frederik Ramm ## eMail [email protected] ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" > > ______________________________**_________________ > Talk-us mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.openstreetmap.**org/listinfo/talk-us<http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us> >
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