FOSS4G 2013 Planning Meeting September

Attending:

SF/IH/AS/JM/SA/MI/AP/BR/CH/JC/RH/MW/MS

Contract:

Final contract docs will come from CH asap and will be sent to OSGeo. (Contract sent to venue tonight, back to us by Monday, back to them next week then us to check before being sent to OSGeo) Deposit is 50% (10% now then rest later.....)min numbers 400, rough costing is ~ £90 per person per daySo deposit of 10% is about £11k WiFi issues are a worry, uni has suggested that a member of LOCliases directly with Uni IT group. Issues are keeping it up concurrent connection thru access points bandwidth multi-port connection

• • ACTION** MI to be internet connectivity liason and discuss this before contract signed, this has to be factored into the contract as it is integral to the event.

WiFi registration to protect against abuse

ITcommuniction in info pack, anyone with an EDUroam should try to use this.

ALL QUESTIONS ABOUT LOGISTICS FROM LOC MUST GO THRU CH......(does this include MI and questions about wifi?) Labs

How many labs (concurrent) do we need?

possibly up to 200 folk in labs.

Need a space for people with their own computers and a computer lab so people can use LiveDVD etc.

Core rooms for meetings, but then a pool of periphary rooms that an be used/dropped as we go. The tent must be used as a focal point and get things running in it....

Tent

biggest tent will be 25mx25m this is about 350 seated and 900 standing so it is absolutely massive.

• • ACTION** CH to pass details of tent.

• • ACTION** MI to think about power/lighting and IT in tent.(pass questions thru CH)

Budget Has anything changed on the budget? Hitting the $84k seems attainable If we get more sponsorship, do we give more to OSGeo or plough more into the "extras" for the conference. But, we should trickle cash into the local chapter.....this is open and we need to see how it goes. JM suggests a rising trickle feed to OSGeoUK as/if profit increases. MOU needed between AGI and FOSS4G (CH)

Other budget issues/suggestions: Set up sales pipeling for sponsorship Clarify scope/control of susbsistence for LOC Minimise credit card charges

Agreed that MS and AS will take on budget/financial control role, and work with Alan at AGI to ensure procedures are in place to control spending. Proposal for procedures and expenditure authorisation to be drawn up (MS/AS). Regular monitoring will take place.

Website

Comms group (Jo/RH/AS/SA) Site update: Site up and hosted by amazon. Needs a date in the top banner. Needs site to be styled Vanilla WordPress theme wont hack it, need a slick looking site. If we can get someone in the community to get some design options and tthen find someone to make it happen. JCs hubby is happy to help on the web site. Hosting currently free but will cost (small amount) in July. Site to be archived at OSGeo. FOSS4G COOKBOOK? we should contribute to a recipe of how to put an event together . Blogroll may help. This is part of legacy and should help future FOSS4G's

• • ACTION** For ALL- think about what content we need on the website and when it needs to go live.
  • ACTION** RH to add others to the admin and they will monitor the account and retweet others that are using the #hashtag DONE (shared login details: https://basecamp.com/1920286/projects/762306-foss4g-13/documents/1027329-communications)
  • ACTION** JC and BR to amplify things on the many mailing lists (discuss/conf lists) frequency around 2-3 times a month.

JM suggests getting the registration form up asap (CH said she can get this done once we have contract signed and a good idea of the costing), small prizes for first from each county to sign up and a map showing where folk are coming from Pledge Page/Volunteering

We need extra help so need to get in contact with those on the pledge page and say we have a job for them and will get back to them.

AP suggested make a list of tasks and post them up so that people can volenteer for a task -tracking volenteers The volenteers page should be moved into the main page as soon as poss....

• • ACTION** JM to be the volunteer coordinator

Marketing List

Just saying who we contact - this is to go through the comms group only! If you have a suggestion, send it to the comms group. The comms group will then sort it or delegate it back to someone.

Workshops and Hacks

Not just about software...... MI suggested a WhereDial - 3D printing... JC stresses that this event is about OSGeo and we should focus on that, rather than being distracted by non-core OSGeo things. WhereDial parked. Random Acts of kindness - cost implications MI to give indication to on cost this would be using the tent so the cost implications for 100 bodies would be water, sandwiches and coffee...... This might get different people interested and mixing with the FOSS4G'ers.

3 things this group are responsible for:

Hackathon - not extending capabilities of software, they are using stack and app hacking to solve real world problems. Code is doing good. Workshops - technical training and learing to improve all levels of users skill on software.. Put out a call for workshop proposals. Team then picks workshops and facilitates them Codesprints - new blood initiative - if you want to get into the codesprint, you attend a specific workshop on "how2Code" and then you attnd th sprint. Important that the code sprints organise themselves, we just make em comfortable. JC is concerned that we dont loose focus that this is OSGeo event and is meeting of the tribes. We dont want to disenfranchise the core OSGeo coders. AS reminding us about the 4 key groups that we are trying to reach out to in addition to the core OSGeo group: existing GIS users the ‘new to GIS’ users (particularly from small orgs) potential contributors to open source data users and journalists, and 'armchair auditors'

• • ACTION** MW/MI/IH call for workshops is separate to call for papers, perhaps ahead of CfP. Submission should be short (500words) and cover the following:

Describe what you will teach How long will it take: full/half/quater day What do you need: equip/accom/connectivity requirements

LOC Composition

Steven proposed that Barend Köbben as one of the chairs of the Academic Track should be coopted onto the LOC if he was willing. This was agreed (and he was).

Program ideas - Rollo

3 days with 9 streams (80 talks a day) ~ 240 talks

• Overarching theme: Freedom (to..., from...)
  • topics
    • streams

So we would be defining the broad theme, encouraging submissions around a list of topics (but not precluding others), this forms the CfP. The papers then get shuffled into the paralell streams, which will emerge from the selected papers. JC - caution needed that the themes do not to disenfranchise sponsors such as ESRI.

• • ACTION** RH tie down theme, draft list of topics, and draft CfP.

Review - blind abstract review ranking by comittee, then marked by the crowd and bingo. But leaves a bit of wiggle room to make the streams hang together.

Keynote Speakers

• • ACTION** ALL - new list for keynote speakers added to basecamp, stick some suggestions down or even "someone from organisation/sector X to tak on Y"

Paper Submission Academic Track - need a management system, something like "EasyChair" (free and open) Main Stream - will wait and see what academic track comes up with and wait and see, they may go for a far simpler system as the submission process is simpler.

Sponsorship

We will delay confirming prices if possible until we have some idea about level of sponsorship. Plentiful sponsorship could also be used to eg fund more bursaries. Steven has drafted sponsorship package - this was discussed in detail, and some changes/rationalisations made. Apart from the lowest level, all packages include exhibition space. We already have an offer of £25k - this will be Diamond. Can we recognise differing contributions of small and large, commercial and non-commercial organisations? We will need to make clear that we will provide some flexibility to recognise contributions of smaller and non-profit organisations, for example if they don't want to exhibit. We should recognise contributions in kind through exposure of logos in publicity, slides, website pages. Noted that OSGeo will need space. Package to be finalised by end Sept. Publishable version (web and paper) needed by mid Oct, even in basic form, for diseemination at conferences. Offers from potential sponsors were discussed, agreed that SF will contact.

• • ACTION** SF - publish proposal for sponsorship packages for final review and comments.

Accomodation and Entertainment

Numbers for evening entertainment, and for accomodation eg in hotel), need to be provisionally fixed. Provisional numbers were agreed, CH has details.

• • ACTION** SF/CH to agree.

LOC Planning Timeline

A detailed timeline with deadlines and milestones was discussed and recorded in a Google Spreadsheet. This will also be populated with allocation of tasks to people, and key dates published on website.

• • ACTION** SF - complete GSS, share

Further Meetings/Calls

F2F will be needed in April (around 15th) to review papers. Until then, at least monthly calls to be held on Friday mornings, probably on WebEx.

• • ACTION** SF - set schedule of calls, AS set up Webex appointments.

Academic Track (more in the academic doc) what are we trying to achieve? How is this different to previous FOSS4G's

Want to attract some of the big guns right down to the level of MSc or PhD students possibly through posters (with a 2 min unconference session to present their poster) How do you ensure that a phd student gets the foot up to get their paper in a top journal. The CfP will have to be structured to attract early stage researchers - the review is double blind, but you attach a "early Stage researcher" flag to indicate to the reviewers.

So what are we planning?

• 20-25 papers to fill 1 track
• Best 8-10 papers invited to submitt to special edition TransGIS
• Rest of papers into conference proceedings (we + friends(old gaurd)) would be the editorial team. Or we can look at open access journals such as Journal of Spatial Info Science

Could use the tent space to invite academic presenters to give their papers in a lightning talk (2mins/4slides) to the "bigger" group to try and create interaction between sectors. Conference proceedings on a USB stick and the post them on LuLu for people to download. TransGIS publication available at the event to build on momentum

Dates:

20th September - Preliminary CfP - - to be pushed at GeoCommunities Late Octover 2012 - CfP 1st Feb 2013 - Deadline for submission 1st April - Review decission 1st May - Final Submission of accepted 1st June - Final selection of what goes where and 1st July - txt sent to Trans Of GIS 1st Sept - publish the journal and Conference Proceedings

Submission system

EasyChair - BR used but thought flow was a bit confussing OpenConferecneSystems - BR not used for a while Indigo - Nobody got any experience

• ACTION* BK to look at these platforms by the 13th October

Reviewers:

start with the last years list and email them Template All papers (long/short) submitted in TransGIS templte (.doc/.tex)

Themes:

we will follow the FOSS4G broad themes and will create topics from what we receive. clarification on publishing? Open journals and UK law. MI to look at UK Law (consulting with JM)