FOSS4G 2016 Weekly Updates (obsolete)

== Update 08-21-2016 == 1. Hompeage Yes, F4G 2015 is coming up. Afterwards we are in the spotlight. Carmen and me went through the webpage and discussed, what to do until Korea. Carmen summed this up and sent it to Anja, our homepage-angel

2. Liability I am doing a lot of work to get together some numbers and calculation in order to have a base for a risk-estimate for the case, what expenses will come up, if we cancel / have less than the break even attendees of ~650. With this, OSGeo board will decide, up to what level they will stand for liability. If there is a gap, we have to insure us elsewhere.

3. Bonner GeoSommer Already passed some informations on that this week. More to come on a seperate WIKI page later.

4. legal status Not cleared yet, although the 4 weeks deadline for finance office is over for some weeks. I work hard to clear that up, but it's holidays time....

5. Timetable Uli and me will start to make a first rough time table for the whole event(s) and also for some major ToDo's for the working groups on monday.

6. Workshop-Facilities We have quite good chances to get some rooms inside BIT, a university facility with nice rooms which is very close to WCCB. Again, it's holiday time now...

== Update 06-29-2016 ==

1. Logo and Hompeage Yes we have. Since FOSSGIs hacking weekend, we have a (not announced) homepage already running on 2016.foss4g.org We decided not to go through a community voting with the logo. we had hard discussions about it this weekend and in the end at least 20 people from FOSSGIS agreed with the shape and OSGEO-green. We want to add an OSGEO-logo directly on the starting page in order to show everybody, that this is an OSGEO-event.

In the moment minor changes on logo and website are still possible, but we can start to fill it with content - and we can start to offer sponsorship! Requests for changes could be sent to Till at least until wednesday, as the Küstenschmiede guys want to finalize logo and page on thursday.

2. Chairs also on our meeting this weekend (http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G_2016_Meeting_minutes) we've occuopied our free chairs. We welcome all volunteers to our team!

3. Volunteers-Programme With Katja Haferkorn we have a really realiable chair for the volunteers programme. We've also had the idea to offer a contingent for students with free entrance, if they are wanting to help with coatrack, conference office, general track management, help desk and so on, theymight get a free ticket and share their time with attendance of conference and help the LOC by 1/3 - 2/5 or 50:50 or sth. like that.

4. Kindergarten We all get older and have families, children.... In order to enable people having their children with them to have full participation we thought about offering chdrens mentoring programme. We might get a room (and also have the garden) in WCCB, so that people might come tih children, leave them there and get them back in the afternoon. Also Katja wants to get in contact with some organisations offering such service.

5. Family weekend Taken over from the Dublin proposal, there was the idea of having a family weekend before. We thought about cancelling that idea and instead of that we offer a kind of alternative program for families. Till will ask at Bonn Tourismus whether they can make a kind of programme for that with field trips and so on, where partners with/without children might participate during the event.

== Update 06-19-2016 ==

1. Workshop Rooms Uli and Astrid pointed us to Gustav Stresemann Insitut as location for workshops for reasonable prices. The location looks quite interesting, we would have to borrow hardware but we could run the workshops at one place. -> http://www.gsi-bonn.de/ Carmen works on that.

2. Email Adresses Finally Marco registered the domain "foss4g2016.org" which now also points to our Jiffy Box. Sebastian, our administer will setup an email-server on this soon, so everybody in the LOC gets a personal email account. /Done - if no email received or need an account, please contact me

3. OK Lab Bonn I joined the OK Lab Bonn meeting yesterday in the city hall and presented my idea of having s.th. like pre-conference hacking workshops. This is for now just a rough idea, but up to now, I've got one feedback from Damian, who evinced his interest. This idea should be filled by more....

4. Logo & Marketing This is kind of double windmill. I'd like to have homepage, marketing material and so on ASAP, but without having a logo or at least some fixed colors, this makes no sense. On the other hand I'll possibly meet Nicolas Bozon from Geolabs in Como, who would like to help us with that. But I'd also like to have something in myh ands to promote FOSS4G 2016 already in Como. Also I have a friend here in Bonn, who works in that field and with who I talked about the logo issue. Every idea to get out of that circle welcome!

5. Chairs Update see http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G_2016_Chairs

6. Volunteer Programme Jeff pointed me to this. On other conferences there was a broad volunteer programme and we just started the discussion, how to attract students for doing some work during the conference. I got back to old university contacts - waiting for reply. Anyhow there is a string need for a chair for this ... anybody without a hat out there?

7. Ice Breaker Much discussions on that point in the past days. I'd like to fix the location by end of next week (26.6.2015) - what also means, that I cancel our opportunity for the Botanical Garden. Last chance to express your doubts via the mailing list!

== Update 06-08-2016 ==

1. Basecamp Bonn

Friday I was in the basecamp Bonn, the self-named "the coolest place in the world". And -yes it's a cool place. It's a youth hostel, accomodation starts from 25€/night. Beds are in caravans and a sleeper inside a hall. The place is very close to WCCB. People are cool there and I blocked the full capacities from 23. till 27th of August 2016, which are, depending on single/double distribution range between 50-70 beds. This goes over the official Bonn Tourismus, so that people stying there also receive their free public transport ticket. There is a cafe and WLAN inside. (pictures see below)

2. Ice Breaker

I visited the Botanical Garden last week. The place is great - if the weather is good, if not, we have problems. Also we would have to make everything on our own, caterer, toilets, security. Therefore I also talked to the basecamp-guy last Friday. We could make the Ice Breaker there, they have a great ground outside and they would do the full catering. People would pay on their own, which would take some pressure from our budget. This is more "rudimentary" while the Ice Breaker in the botanical garden would be more "precious". I would favour to go to base camp, any opinions on that? (pictures see below)

3. Pre-Business Meeting (or s.th. like that)

Last week Carmen and me visited potential workshop rooms inside IHK. The problem with these rooms is, that there are two workshop rooms with a capacity of less than 20 and one lectue hall for about 60 but no hardware inside. We want to get in contact with the technic-guy to ask how strong the WLAN is, because my guess it, thati it might be to weak for the workshops. LAN is difficult, as there is only internal LAN for the IHK. So (I personally think, that for two workshops there is too much to do and I would favour to look for other workshop opportunities. But, as IHK offered us the rooms for free, we might think of making s.th. like a "business pre-conference", where we invite companies (or include the participation on that event in the sponsoring packages) and give the companies room to present their company in e.g. 15 minutes-slots. Also we can give room for "free talk" between the companies in the afternoon. That's partwise what Boundless did on their partner meetings, but that way, it would be open also to non-boundless partners ;-) The goal is to give the companies the chance for international networking inside our business. But, as said, that's just a quick idea to be discussed.

4. 1st LOC team meeting

Wednesday, 10th of June we meet in LUXX (NOT NYX!!!) Bonn at 19h30

5. Shots from Base Camp

Inside Base Camp

Inside Base Camp

Outside Base Camp

Outside Base Camp