FOSS4G2008 Lessons Learned

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This page is a collection of information, comments, and suggestions, based on the planning, organizing, and hosting of the FOSS4G 2008 conference. The intent is to provide a resource that can be used by organizers of future FOSS4G conferences. This is not a forum for conference attendees to comment on the conference. Use FOSS4G2008_Comments for that.

Workshops and Labs

Communication with Instructors

Instructors should be *forced* onto the workshop-dev mail list - at 2008, some instructors did not join the list and were a bit incommunicado

Printed Handouts

2008 provided printed handouts where instructors wished them to be provided. One issue is that for labs it is difficult to know how many to print, for the labs are essentially walk in affairs. Feedback from attendees at labs and workshops suggests that, on the whole, printed material is desirable. One downside to having printed material is that attendees often tend to race ahead of the instructor, which can be problematic if the workshop or lab content is complex or likely to cause problems if an attendee misses a step.

We found a very helpful professional printshop near (i.e. 2 minutes walk) to the conference venue. They were flexible, accommodating and very professional. We organised a kind of printing "slush fund" at the printshop, which was capped at a certain level.

On another track, printed material offers a sponsorship opportunity...

Presentations

Call for Papers

Academic track

The call for papers did not include a request for number of words. This lead to some minimalistic, say useless, abstracts for the proceedings. A reasonable abstract and 3 keywords will also help to categorise the submissions more easily for the individual sessions.

Suggestions for 2009:

• abstract number of words (300-500 words + 3 key references)
• request 3 keywords

General track

• abstract number of words (150-300 words + optionally 3 key references)
• request 3 keywords

Program handouts etc

• convenient small flyer, nice to carry around
• presenter names would be desired (small font)

Conference website software

For the first time, OSGeo is making use of the Open Conference Systems (OCS) software to 'manage' a FOSS4G conference.

• See FOSS4G2008_Site_Upgrade
• and FOSS4G2008_Committee_Issues#OCS_website_management
• Limitations (to be fixed for 2009):
  • No list of participants easily extractable
  • No online session navigation (as supported Indico, see www.foss4g2006.org)