FOSS4G2008 Workshops

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Introduction

The FOSS4G2008 Workshop Committee is responsible for the organization of both Workshops and Labs. Workshops are 3-hour classroom sessions, and Labs are 90-minute classes. The committee reports to the FOSS4G2008 Conference Committee.

FOSS4G Workshop Committee Members

• Burnie Nawn (Coordinator)
• [Gavin Flemming]
• [Graeme McFerren]
• Dave Patton (chair)
• Jeff McKenna

Next Committee Meeting

The date/time for the next meeting is tentative

• date: 2007/09/05
  
• time: To be confirmed[]
  
• meeting will be via [[]]
• Agenda:

List of workshop submissions

[[1]]

Criteria used by the workshop committee to review workshop submissions

1. meets conference mandate:
   1. matches with the themes of the conference
   2. makes use of software that is both "free" and "open source"
2. submission's technical requirements can be met by the conference facilities
3. likelyhood of a quality workshop:
   1. successful workshop presented at prior FOSS4G conference
   2. expertise of the workshop presenter in the workshop subject matter
   3. any relevant input from workshop evaluations collected by FOSS4G2006, or personal experience of workshops presented by the presenter(s) at other conferences
   4. demonstrates practical applications
4. expected level of interest in the workshop topic

Scoring

The range of scores to be used is 0 through 5:

 0 = does not meet any of the criteria
 1 = barely meets some of the criteria, and doesn't meet some of the criteria
 3 = average
 5 = meets or exceeds all of the criteria

The goal is to end up with a score in the range of 0-5 for the workshop. Two ways to do the scoring:

1. Use the provided spreadsheet, which allows for a score for each criterion. Divide the "Total Score" by 4 to get the 'score for the workshop'. Doing it this way makes it easy to see any workshops that received a zero for any criterion. Despite the 'total score', workshops that have a zero score for any criterion deserve further examination as to their suitability for the conference.
2. Use the provided spreadsheet, but just assign an overall score of 0-5 for the workshop. If, as part of doing this, you think a workshop would score zero on any criterion, make a note, and bring it up in the discussions, because workshops that have a zero score for any criterion deserve further examination as to their suitability for the conference.

Workshops Notes

Note: Some of the information below is out of date.

Workshop Duration and Scheduling

http://www.foss4g2007.org/program_overview.html

Questions for Organising Committee

• Number and dimension of rooms, tables (how many PCs /people can we fit in a room)

Feedback from Past Conferences (things to note)

• overcrowded workshops are bad
• registrants could possibly list their "top 4" workshop selections
• LiveCD for linux workshops very successful
• grouping workshops by room "theme" successful (MapServer room, GRASS room, ...)
• foss4g2006 workshops wiki : http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Foss4g2006_wks
• foss4g2006 workshops rooms : http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/FOSS4G2006#Rooms
• foss4g2006 number of attendees per workshop : http://www.foss4g2006.org/site/pdf/WksNbOfAttendees.pdf