FOSS4G 2009 Marketing Plan

Summary

Tuesday 17 - Saturday 21 November 2009

Sydney, Australia

FOSS4G, the annual conference attracting the best of Geospatial Open Source users and developers, will meet in Sydney, Australia in 2009. The conference theme, User Driven, will extend the gathering of the tribes vibe to embrace users and users' case studies.

Specific conference aims:

• To encourage the adoption of Open Source Geospatial Software.
  • To facilitate the meeting of the Open Source Geospatial tribes and sharing of information.
  • To provide a forum for Open Source Geospatial projects to showcase their products to potential users.
  • To allow Geospatial users to be educated in the latest Open Source Geospatial technologies, and practices.

This marketing document identifies key people likely to attend the FOSS4G conference, how to reach them, and what their motivations are for coming. Resulting from this analysis we should tweak our program to ensure it is attractive for our delegates, and focus our marketing efforts to ensure we reach interested delegates.

To brush up on the basics of a Marketing Plan, I suggest skimming over Quick MBA Marketing Plan.

Delegate Demographics

This section aims to profile different types of delegates. It should include:

• Description
• Expected percentage of delegates
• What they want
• How to reach them
• Price sensitivity and spending criteria

OSGeo Developers (tribes)

To date, OSGeo has been heralded as the "international gathering of the tribes", each tribe representing a different Open Source project.

These hard core software developers come from around the world.

Contact: Various OSGeo email lists, in particular (discuss A T lists.osgeo.org).

Geospatial sections of Government departments in Australia

Australian Geospatial conferences like the Spatial Sciences Institute bi-annual conference draw ~ 800 delegates mainly from Government, Mining and the Utilities sectors. Government sectors have already shown an interest in Geospatial Open Source, and this conference in particular.

Contact: Bruce Bannerman.

Geospatial sections of Government departments in New Zealand

Ditto.

Contact: Liz Kolster (?)

Australia/New Zealand Open Source Community

The annual Australian [Linux conference] attracts ~ 800 people.

The annual [Open Source Developers Conference] attracts ~ 350 people.

These local Open Source developers will likely be interested to learn how they can deploy Geospatial Open Source. They would probably be interested in a general overview of topics, and specific lab sessions where they can get their hands dirty.

Key contact point: Jeff Waugh and Pia Waugh, who will be able to forward onto various email lists, like the Open Source Industry Australia (OSIA) and various Linux Users Groups.

The NZ Open Source Society promotes the use of OSS in New Zealand, and has good contacts into government, business, and the various developer/user communities. Key contact point: Don Christie

Education

There has been reasonable interest from Universities and TAFE colleges at Australian geospatial conferences, although it is unclear yet whether there is enough interest to draw delegates to the conference.

2007 Sponsors

As identified by Paul Ramsey:

SPONSORS Fee in US Fee in CAD

• Autodesk Inc. - Platinum 25,000.00 28,451.12
• DM Solutions Group - Gold 10,000.00 11,603.75
• ESRI Sponsorship - Silver 5,000.00 5,688.00
• GeoConnections 15,000.00 14,910.00 (local)
• Google Sponsorship - Gold 10,000.00 11,364.62
• ILMB (Integrated Land Management Bureau) 10,000.00 11,608.75 (local)
• Leica Geosystems - Gold 10,000.00 11,251.74
• Orkney, Inc. - Silver 5,000.00 5,191.91
• Refractions Research - Gold 10,000.00 11,603.75
• Safe Software Inc.- Gold 10,000.00 11,603.00
• Sierra Systems Group Inc. 5,000.00 5,300.81 (local)
• Total Sponsorship Payment Received 115,000.00 128,577.45

EXHIBITORS Fee in US Fee in CAD

• CamptoCamp - Stephanie Debayle 2,500.00 2,660.37
• Natural Resources Canada - Brian Low 1,250.00 1,452.00 (local)
• Open Planning Project - Chris Holmes 1,250.00 1,303.37
• Timberline Natural Resource Group - Will Cadell 2,500.00 2,664.01 (local)

Total Exhibitor Payments Received 8,079.75

Please note that this is *NOT* a useful list for solicitation purposes, over half of the entries are organizations with little interest in sponsoring an event on the other side of the world. A (local) tag is next to organisations unlikely to sponsor.

Market Segmentation - Sponsors

Media partners

Magazines

GPS World (user:sab made initial contact with Don Jewell, GPS World's Military & Government Editor. They are interested in sending some delegates to cover the event)

Position Magazine have offered free advertising in return for free tickets to FOSS4G. Contact: Wendy Chapman and Jon Fairall.

Related Conferences

• 17-19 July 2008, Surfers Paradise [SSI Qld] ~ 300 people from Qld Geospatial industry.
• 1-3 Sep 2008, Auckland GeoCart'2008 Cartography Conference biannual, attracts ~ 200 people from geospatial education/research and industry.
• 29 Sep - 3 Oct 2008, Cape Town, South Africa [FOSS4G 2008]
• 02-05 Dec 2008, Sydney: [Open Source Developers Conference] attracts ~ 350 people. General Open Source.
• Nov 2008, Canberra: Geospatial in Government conference being considered. See Ben Searle.
• 19-20 Jan 2009, Hobart: [Linux conference] attracts ~ 800 people. General Open Source.
• 28 Sep - 2 Oct 2009 Adelaide: [Spatial Sciences Institute Bi-annual] attracts ~ 900 people from Government, mining, utilities from Australia and around the region.
• 4 - 6 November 2009 Perth: [WALIS] attracts ~ 500 people from Government, mining, utilities mainly from West Australia.
• 17 - 21 November 2009 Sydney: FOSS4G 2009