FOSS4G'13

Looks good. I would like to get things in place fairly soon for swag-purchasing, but I'm not going to be available for the meeting on Friday unfortunately. 

I just caught up with the news that OSGeo is unable/unwilling to send Jeff
to FOSS4G.

Is someone else willing to explain to my CIO diamond sponsor why the OSGeo
president is not at FOSS4G? I might as well resign from my job now before
he reasonably concludes that OSGeo is on the verge of banckruptcy, open
source is a serious risk and our technology road maps need to be completely
rewritten.

When we're discussing the futures of OSGeo and OGC and the possibility of
building on our 2008 MoU are we going to make zero progress and just say
"We'll see what Jeff thinks when he wakes up in 8 hours"

We can't hold the flagship OSGeo FOSS4G conference in the UK and accept
that the president will not be here.

Option 1: the conference steps up and pays and makes an itemized deduction
from the profit we transfer to OSGeo. We don't loose any money doing this.

Option 2: we talked about some seed money being given to OSGeo UK. Jeff's
expenses could be deducted from this.

Option 3: we make a saving somewhere else in the programme, e.g. less
entertainment, to make sure that when it comes to the time to seriously
discuss geo we have the necessary senior people in the room.

Where did you see this Ian? I haven't seen / heard any discussion about Jeff not being there?

Steven asked Jeff a few days ago and he said he would not be attending. I had been thinking about whether the conference should offer to fund his attendance- basically taking a little bit out of what we'd be giving back to OSGeo.

FWIW I think Ian has made some really valuable points here, and I also think that having Jeff not attend really highlights the reduction of importance of the global FOSS4G event to OSGeo, which is something some of us have been worrying about for some time. 

This arose from the board's decision to not fund travel and subsistence for
key OSGeo members.

I completely support Jeff - he gives vast amounts of time travelling around
promoting OSGeo, but should not be expected to reach into his own pocket.

Jo also hits the nail on the head with her observation - the President will
be at FOSS4G-NA, FOSS4G-CEE etc, but not at FOSS4G global

Thanks to Ian and Jo for expressing concerns that I have also had but wondered whether I had unrealistic expectations.

I understand Ian's concerns and partly agree with them, particularly if you are looking for  a layer of security and confidence to match that offered by a big Californian vendor. However, one could consider a strength of open source projects to be that they are independent of an organisation or foundation (or at least they can be) - I imagine that might not be the view of the CIO of a large organisation. This is sounding a bit like "the case for merging with Eclipse"!

Jeff is unable to fund himself to come over and the board has previously decided not to fund travel for face to face meetings. Jeff suggested Jorge Sanz to do the President's State of OSGeo talk (he doesn't appear to be a Board Member or an Exec officer), I responded asking whether Peter might be a better option (sorry I didn't ask first).

Jo is right that his decision indicates a lack of focus on the main OSGeo event of the year, even more so when the President has attended "FOSS4G-BA, FOSS4G-CEE and also will attend FOSS4G-JP and FOSS4G-Korea" (quote from his mail) later in the year (funded by the conferences). 

I could go off on a full blown rant but now is not the time

I am happy to fund Jeff coming over if that is what others want/support, I expect travel and accommodation will cost us £1,500-£2,000. That assumes that Jeff has the time available to come if he is funded.

Peter, your calm, humour and wisdom would be much appreciated this morning

Nothing to do with this?: https://basecamp.com/1920286/projects/762306-foss4g-13/messages/3317567-jeff-mckenna

Hopefully it is just a question of funding. Its great that Jeff supports the regional conferences as they are a fairly new thing and need the support. I'm sure OSGIS or FOSS4G-UK/EU will be happy to have him in the future. But at the expense of missing the FOSS4G global event?

I  support the suggestion of funding  OSGeo President's  expenses from the conference budget  for FOSS4G 2013.

I think it is important to have OSGeo President attend and present at the global FOSS4G conference.

Suchith

Hi all, just catching up on all this - as I said, I didn't know about this until now. I generally agree with most of the points raised:

- I think it's important for the President of OSGeo to be there unless there's some very compelling reason that can't happen
- I think we should try to make this happen, and should be open to funding Jeff's travel (though am slightly in two minds)
- I think the board decision on not funding travel for board members (at least my vote on that anyway) was based on the assumption that most board members will be attending anyway and get sufficient benefit from the event that they shouldn't be treated differently from other attendees. I would love for OSGeo to pay for me to attend, but have budgeted for my company to pay for me to be there and didn't think we should use OSGeo's limited funds to automatically pay for all 9 board members to attend (well there's also the practical question that the board changes shortly before FOSS4G anyway, so do you pay for the new board with last minute fares if needed, or the old board).
- it would be interesting to know if the other FOSS4G events that Jeff is attending are funding his travel.

Let me talk to Jeff and/or the rest of the board about this (as far as I know, Jeff hasn't communicated this decision to the board, unless I missed it, and I suspect there might be pressure from other board members, and/or a decision to fund him, once they know).

So I'd say hold tight and don't get too worked up about it yet, I will see what I can do to help.

Cheers,
Peter.

Thanks Peter

We will wait until you report back to us

I think Jeff did mention that there was some financial help from the other events, to do with his keynoting and getting some reduction or other as a result. But I'm sure you'll get that from him, Peter.

Hi all, just a brief update, but I've been in touch with Jeff and he would be happy to come providing that we can sort the funding, which I am sure we will be able to. I will work this through the OSGeo board (while we could just do it through the LOC, and that will be a fallback, I'd like to get the board to agree to fund travel for the President as needed for this and future global FOSS4Gs). I've been keeping Steven in the loop. So give me a few more days, but am confident this will all be fine. 

Thanks Peter

Until Peter gets the mechanics resolved please keep this within the team.