Conference Committee F2F 2016

Suggested agenda and notes for a face to face meeting of the Conference Committee, interested members of the OSGeo Board and any others with an interest in the call for proposals for FOSS4G 2018

The date/time of the meeting is to be agreed by means of a doodle poll. Now confirmed for 16.00 to 17.00 local time on Thursday 25th September. Room will be the Speakers Corner there will also be a google hangout for those who want to 'dial in'

Please feel free to add topics or comment on topics in advance of the meeting (indicate who is making the edit)

Agenda

• Confirm that 2018 will be "rest of the world"
• Discuss financial expectations
  • Pricing
  • Free passes
  • Desired surplus or expectations
  • OSGeo Guarantee
• Relationship with 3rd parties
• Event structure/facilities
  • Catering
  • Party
  • Gifts
  • Conference date - Was in September for years and recently has been a little earlier, list email
• Review CfP papers and timetable
• Membership of Conference Committee (this is a long outstanding topic which we may wish to discuss before the voting for 2018 commences). Eli's opinions on membership list email. See also the default OSGeo Committee guidelines.
• Paid coordinator role - should one be introduced? (Suggested by Cameron)
  • A regular feature in "Lessons Learned" is volunteer burn out, and lack of experience carried from one FOSS4G to the next. This in part has been mitigated by FOSS4G global events being selected in locations where FOSS4G regional events have already been tested. So question is: Should OSGeo sponsor a person or organisation to act as "FOSS4G supporter" who has the role of collating FOSS4G knowledge and sharing it from one event to the next, paid out of the profits of FOSS4G events?
• AOB

Meeting Minutes

• RFP for FOSS4G 2018 will be drafted, circulated, approved and issued by the end of October

• 3 Year cycle is confirmed (2016-Europe, 2017-North America, 2018-Rest of the world)

• Discussion about economic inclusiveness and what should be required for a Rest of the world year

• Steven suggests for 2018 and any other rest of the world year
  • Committee should make no specific guidance for attendance cost, except to make it affordable for local participants
  • European & North American years should share a percentage (dependent on level of financial support offered by OSGeo) of surplus from conference with OSGeo organisation.
  • Rest of World years should target a minimum of a break with a lower expectation of the share of surplus being returned to OSGeo. A larger share of any surplus should be reinvested into local OSGeo activities.
    • This reduced expectation of surplus and return to OSGeo should only apply when FOSS4G is organized in/by communities of the Low or Lower-Middle Income Economies as defined by the World Bank and WHO. The Cost of living and PPP is considerable different in Low or Lower-Middle Income Economies and thereby the conference fee could be considerably lower.

• • Break even and cost should be sliding scale based on ranking based on language used on OSGeo sponsorship page
  • LOC needs entity with bank account to participate in the submission process
  • For LOC's that are not chosen for FOSS4G, someone from the Conference Committee should reach out to them and suggest a smaller local event. Potentially OSGeo could offer some seed funding for a regional event (criteria and controls will need to be agreed).

The above recommendations were agreed by the attendees

• Discussion on how can continuity be kept between each year?
• Jody clarified the relationship between the OSGeo Board and the conference committee
  • The conference committee chair should direct and make choices
  • The board will chime in with the chair if there are issues that need to be discussed

Action Items

Jody

• will direct Steven to ranking language from OSGeo sponsorship page

Steven

• will draft a new call for Letters of Interest that is targeted at the Rest of the World years and articulates slightly different expectations as agreed above
• will make a rough draft of a FOSS4G conference support position to be filled by someone who can help current year FOSS4G LOC with insight on running there conference.
• will work on trimming non-participating committee members from the group and then invite new members.
• will define what requirements are needed for a new committee members