FOSS4G 2012 Lessons Learned

The international FOSS4G 2012 conference, scheduled to be held in Beijing in Sept 2012, was cancelled. This has been a disappointing setback for our OSGeo community, and here I proposed to capture some of the key events which lead up to this cancellation, and with our hind site perspective, identify areas we can change to make future conferences more resilient and successful.

The intent is to start this conversation on the OSGeo Conference email list, then move to the FOSS4G 2012 Lessons Learned wiki page as ideas start to consolidate.

I'd like to start out by laying out some discussion ground rules. In particular, please avoid letting this discussion break into a witch hunt, or blame game. Remember that almost all people involved in FOSS4G 2012 were volunteers, giving of their precious time freely. Instead, identify an event or decision, discuss the implications of the event, and ideally follow up with some recommendations on what we can do in future.