Tenth VisCom Meeting Minutes

This meeting was entirely via IRC (IRC log) on August 17th, 2006, from 15:00 to 16:00 UTC. Present were Michael Gerlek (chair), Tyler (scribe), Arnulf Christl, Lisa Landers, Aaron Racicot.

Agenda was: http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Tenth_VisCom_Meeting

We covered "new" business", and also scrubbed out a lot of the "old" business. Action items are in bold.  Minutes are organized by subject, not chronologically.

New Business

 * Michael moved to add Venka as member of committee
 * Seconded by Arnful, all were in favour
 * [TODO] add Venka to members list


 * Introduction to Lisa Landers, Autodesk marketing
 * She has time to help with OSGeo, has marketing/event and non-profit background and can help with guidance around event planning
 * [TODO] she will put together a set of documents as a help/guidebook that we can refer to if we want to learn more about event management/marketing, serving as a standard operating procedure for planning events.
 * Lisa is Autodesk coordinator for MapAsia conference
 * Suggested that Viscom to choose/identify which conferences to support for the upcoming year... discuss on mailing list.


 * Event Handling
 * Michael introduces idea of having a specific group for handling event management side of viscom.
 * It's unclear whether we have enough people to fork. The idea is not to fork but to have two specific focuses.
 * The idea is to help focus on some of the non-event tasks better.
 * Discussed to spread the even planning load (especially international)
 * Maintain assigning event owner for each event.
 * We need to keep aiming to have local contact to help lead organisation


 * Hawaii Event
 * As brought up by Frank W on mailing list
 * [TODO] mpg to post idea to discuss list and give general invite to folks to participate/take lead.
 * Frank W. adds that Ben Disco did express interest in attending. Some coordinatation with him would be good.


 * Incubation Support
 * Discussing collateral needs for projects that are graduating from incubation
 * Arnulf suggests projects should have a presentation for graduation
 * [TODO] mpg to follow up on inccom grad. needs/ideas


 * Prototype web site replace discussion
 * mpg, arnulf are keen to move to the new site
 * Tyler explains that another week is needed before site is moved off a development server


 * Events Page and Library
 * [TODO] mpg to fix/clean up events page on wiki and then do parallel process in drupal as a test process
 * ongoing item...


 * Membership Sign-up Process
 * If we can have new web site up by foss4g, members could sign up, etc.
 * Check out: checkout http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Project_Infrastructure_Migration
 * Also http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Drupal_Portal


 * Shirts and Business Cards
 * Michael wants to help organise this more
 * Discussed individual members who want shirts, and vips that he owes shirts to, plus all the events that are happening.
 * How many shirts needed for upcoming euro events?
 * Lisa requests 10-20 shirts specifically for map asia
 * [TODO] to start getting invite and ordering process in motion
 * Tyler notes we have a paypal account (now paypal@osgeo.org)
 * [TODO] Tyler to follow up with funcom on how the paypal account could start to be used more generally
 * [TODO] Michael to review abilities to use landsend for individual orders


 * Booth Upgrade/Budget item
 * Discussed need for buying a booth to be shipped around to events
 * Decided to handle it on an event-to-event basis.

Old Business

 * OSCON Feedback...
 * Aaron and Lisa discussed their observations
 * There was good attendance and visibility
 * 20-25 at bof
 * difficult talking while folks trying to hunt for particular brochures..
 * table placement was improved from where 2.0
 * #1 recurring question... "where is postgis in this?" : )
 * awesome booth placement.. only cost $60k to get it (Autodesk sponsorship)
 * conference in general was really inviting, good quality sessions
 * black booth wasn't the best.. hard to catch eye
 * some booth layout could be improved to be even more inviting
 * Need to software demos available for every project
 * Casual talking outside booth was all positive (Lisa observed)
 * [TODO] Lisa to follow up with ZDNet re: intereview at OSCON