OSGeo Conference RFP 2007

Introduction

This page is the workspace to develop the Request for Proposals regarding the next joint FOSSGIS conference, the OSGeo conference. The OSGeo conference aims at beeing the "meeting of the tribes", the one main yearly convention of Free and Open Source Geospatial folks. Due to the international scope it will probably be organized professionally which means that it will cost money to attend (this being one of the issues that needs to be carified asap). There will be many more OSGeo related conferences, conventions and meetings organized by Local Chapters as has already happened in previous years. Those events can and will develop separately to the "Meeting of the Tribes" and can have another focus, be free to attend run parallel to other events, etc.

Involvement

Everybody can get involved. This is the OSGeo community event. You are currently reading the OSGeo Wiki which makes you part of OSGeo, so go hack it.

Communication

Communication takes place via a mailing list and this Wiki. Subscribe by sending mailto:dev-subscribe@conference.osgeo.org and following the instructions returned. To read up on what has aready been discussed check the Mailing List Archives.

Scope

From the experiences of several forerunners the scope of the conference will likely grow. There are at least two dozillion different software projects involved (including 8 OSGeo projects currently) from all communities, regions and programming language backgrounds. The scope is global and this conference will attempt to bundle all global efforts at one place. One issue is to find out which place that will be. It has been suggested to move across our spheroid and appear at different venues over the next years.

Number of Attendies

MUM,2,3, FOSSGIS, FOSSG4G conferences ranged from 200 to 500 people. With claiming to be the global event we will expect this number to grow. We would ask that a host be able to handle up to 750 attendies, but ability to handle more would be an asset.

Support by OSGeo

OSGeo is not an external entitiy - it is You. How much support OSGeo can offer depends on how much support You are prepared to give. "You" in this context includes individuals, volunteers (where is the difference?) and obviously sponsors. In the past there have been local organizing committee recruited from OSGeo activists.

It may well happen that the conference is organized and run by a professional organizer, this again is up to our (Your) discretion.