FOSS4G'13

The working site for the conference committee of FOSS4G 2013

Feedback on "#bestfoss4gever"

Posted by Peter Batty on September 24, 2013

Hi all,

Congratulations on a really fantastic event that everyone should be really proud of.

I just wanted to give some polite feedback though that the hashtag #bestfoss4gever has been increasingly rankling me and I would like to suggest that we just quietly drop using it. You all did an absolutely fantastic job. But so did my team in Denver, and Paul Ramsey's team in Victoria (which are the others I've been to, so which I feel qualified to comment directly on). And I'm sure the same is true of every other one.

If I started tagging all my tweets this week with #denverwasthebestfoss4gever, I'm sure you'd all feel rather slighted and probably think "what an arrogant ^#^&%#%". But that's rather how #bestfoss4gever feels to me the other way round. And then it rankles me a bit more that nobody from the LOC went to Denver (and most or all of the other events), so how do you know?

So anyway, I don't want to make a huge deal out of this. Clearly I don't think criticizing other events was the intent, I think it started as some marketing hyperbole and it's quite reasonable to aspire to do the best one ever of course, and then everything just got a bit carried away in all the excitement and euphoria. I just think that anointing yourself the best one ever, especially if you haven't actually been to many (or any) others may rub more people than me the wrong way. None of the other events have done this, to the best of my knowledge.

So I vote that we celebrate another truly fantastic FOSS4G event that you all put on, the latest in a sequence of fantastic events, but just without implicitly criticizing the others :). They're all events organized by volunteers for the community, and I just don't think it's productive to treat organizing FOSS4G as a competitive sport.

Of course like all my bits of advice / input, this is purely my opinion and do with it what you will!!

Thanks again for everyone's brilliant efforts, and this is just a minor thing but it has been bugging me so I felt I should mention it.

Cheers,
    Peter.

Comments

Barry Rowlingson on September 24, 2013:

Agreed. Obviously that tag started up before we'd even started, so at that point was clearly aspirational rather than objective, but now after the event you are right, its a bit much for _us_ to use it, but we obviously cant stop anyone else expressing that opinion.

Instead, I suggest the team uses the much more English #isaythemostreallyquitejollygoodfoss4geverwasntit?

Jo Cook on September 24, 2013:

Thanks for the feedback Peter- that must have been quite hard to write!

I agree with the general idea that we should start to tone down the hashtag (never used it- takes too much space), but for different reasons. Regardless of the post-event euphoria we all feel, it's now time to shift the focus onto Portland, and if we (the committee- we can't help what others say) keep banging on about how brilliant our event was (no matter how proud we are of it) then we will just piss people off.

I have to take issue slightly about not going to Denver though- I would imagine that it wasn't a choice we all made- I couldn't afford to go, or I'd have been there like a shot! Also, I've been to 4 FOSS4Gs now so I do actually feel qualified to judge what makes a good FOSS4G and what doesn't- and several other members of the team have also been to at least one.

Finally- to a certain extent there was a huge focus on the Denver FOSS4G before and after it, and there has been a lot of focus and quite a lot of self-congratulation about other North American events since then. I think we had no choice but to big up our event as much as possible to ensure it got the profile it needed, and to ensure we gave OSGeo a healthy profit. That doesn't contradict with my original statement though- I do think we need to tone it down a bit and I'm grateful to Peter for giving me the opportunity to say it.

Steven Feldman on September 24, 2013:

#BestFOSS4Gever was an aspirational hashtag/marketing message (that I think I concocted) which maybe went a little too far. We certainly wanted to set the bar very high for ourselves and I think that was a good thing in driving us towards excellence.

I did not intend to diminish any previous conferences' achievements. Apologies if my use of the tag gave that impression.

FOSS4G13 is over now and I will not be using the tag any more, we have no more marketing to do. 

Thanks to Peter for his forbearance during the event and his measured post in this thread

steven

Barry Rowlingson on September 24, 2013:

My carbon footprint doesn't like me doing two trips across the pond in a year, and I'd already committed to the R user conference in Nashville for 2012 (and another hop to California to canoe with some sea otters!).

I got a lot of feedback from people saying they loved the conference not just because of what we did in Nottingham, but because of the very nature of FOSS4G itself, and from that they had already decided to make an effort to go to Portland. Winwin.

I'm going to try and make it to Portland - but the R user conference is in Los Angeles June 30-July 3rd, and FOSS4G is Sept 8th-12th. If any west coast-based GIS organisations would like to put me up for a month, I'm open to offers....

Peter Batty on September 25, 2013:

Hi all, thanks for the understanding responses. And again thanks for the fantastic job :).

And just to be clear, I wasn't criticising anyone for not being in Denver, just pointing out that because nobody was, you couldn't directly compare.

And you did handle the emergence of the North American local event really well. I'll be interested to see how the North American attendance was in Nottingham - my instinct is that it will be less than it was in Barcelona (think it was 10 or 12 % or so there), but also that this had no noticeable negative impact on the event (as I felt would be the case when there was a discussion on this a while back).

Cheers,
    Peter.