FOSS4G 2014 Planning Meeting 11th February

FOSS4G LOC Meeting Minutes, Feb 11, 2014
Next meeting Feb 27th, 2014

Attending

 * In the room: Beth, Darrell, Tanya, Matt
 * on the phone: Eli, Angie from Wyoming, Chris McW

Agenda

 * Mailings
 * Academic Track
 * Keynotes and Invited speakers
 * Workshops
 * Sponsorships
 * Contracts
 * Volunteers
 * Map Gallery

Mailings
Lots of people got emails from us today (Yay!). Call for proposals went out to all previous attendees, and emails went out to sponsor lists.

Please forward the Call for proposals to various lists you may be a member of.

Academic track
Rolling along, received some comments, 2013 Proceedings are progressing towards publication

Keynotes & Invited Talks
Darrell asked about this on the private list, but feels we need more exposure. He is building a list of all the good suggestions, but needs more ideas. Also so advice on how to prioritize people would be great.

We need 2 kinds of speakers:


 * keynoters (opening and closing)
 * invited talks (includes morning plenary people up to 2 max per day)

Focus at the moment should be on inviting the keynoters. These should be people that are either recognizable names or from interesting/recognizable companies/projects, etc.

Darrell would like a process for ranking to emerge from all our suggestions - he will create a spreadsheet and circulate for voting, and we will try to pick a top 5-6 list from which we can begin to contact potential speakers (hoping to arrive at 2 who can do it).

Workshops
Need to check with prior LOCs on if workshops have been voted on in the past, and if so what tool or system has been used to enable voting. We will likely do the rankings internally to speed the process along.

Sponsorships

 * Media sponsors - we are getting traffic from SlashGeo and a few big blogs and project pages
 * Chris has been doing a great job contacting bloggers and tracking how many agree to post a logo + link (thanks Chris!)
 * sponsor nibbles - sponsors are contacting us with interest and some ideas about custom packages

We discussed what to do when a potential sponsor approaches us with an offer of a custom package, and how to create equivalencies for freebies if any.

We went through our list of important sponsors and broke the list up for followup by volunteers. We will have some language for these special contacts to use, and hope to contact them in the next week, Spencer Gardner wants to help on sponsors so we’ll put him on the list.

Contract reports

 * Beth reports that school buses can be cancelled up to 2 weeks in advance, scheduling would need to be confirmed by then too
 * the WFC contract has been countersigned and will be uploaded to TeamworksPM soon
 * E3 webcasting & show decorator contracts are all in the last phases of being signed.

Volunteer Report

 * Kristin has been helping with editing text and doing good work
 * Lynnae wants to help on map gallery and website
 * Spencer will be helping out with sponsor contacts
 * Tanya will compose some emails for OSGeo Discuss - add to teamworks
 * Everyone should get the word out to your local user groups, OR-URISA Section, etc

Map Gallery
Tentative budget for the map gallery is set and we will turn this group loose soon. Lynnae & Spencer & others. Tanya will contact Barry for information on the setup used last time around. Tanya will will work with VTM to figure out any issues on the OCC side (need to add this to teamworks).

Carry over to next meeting/email

 * Scholarships/Travel Grants:  - who, how, how much, if
 * PDX blog post series
 * Privacy Policy