Hi Jeff,
I'm sorry to hear you are being bullied in private messages. It is
perhaps best to bring in the Code of Conduct committee to help handle
this; direct threats and private bulling tactics seem in violation with
the CoC, and there should be steps taken to ensure that our community
doesn't have bulling in our midst that goes unaddressed.
I'm disappointed that you take LocationTech's core goal as "to promote
business and give those businesses a stage". Your point of view and
behavior on the lists makes more sense knowing that, though; if you
believe that LocationTech is really about promoting the businesses, and
not the greater community, then having LocationTech involved in the
FOSS4G conferences would diminish the non-business community members'
role in the conference, which would be a Bad thing. However, as a member
of the LocationTech PMC and someone who was/is involved in the FOSS4G NA
2015 and FOSS4G NA 2016 process, as well as someone involved in the
FOSS4G 2017 Philadelphia bid, I want to assure you that is not the case.
There is real focus and real work being done at LocationTech to help the
community of developers and users of FOSS4G. In this instance I'm using
FOSS4G for what the acronym actually means, Free and Open Source
Software for Geospatial, not referring to the conference that has
captured that name. Both LocationTech and OSGeo exist to support FOSS4G,
and the greater community (greater then both of those organizations)
that use and develop FOSS4G. There are differences in the organizations
for sure, and I think highlighting those differences and really
understanding how they serve the community in different ways is
important. The ideal scenario that I see is that both organizations
would use those differences to collaborate and have a
sum-greater-than-it's-parts type of support system for FOSS4G. Instead,
we have a situation where there's distrust, finger pointing, and
political "power plays" against each other. We have the president of one
of the organizations characterizing the core goal of the other
organization in a dangerously wrong way. We have decisions and
discussions about a million dollar revenue generating conference focused
on that million dollars, rather then how to ensure that conference does
the best job possible at supporting and pushing forward the community.
We have the precious resource that is the energy of volunteers being
spent on political infighting rather than on collaboration towards
serving the community. I'm not sure the best path forward for this, but
I want to declare that the situation as I see it is bad for the
community, collaboration between OSGeo and LocationTech would be good
for the community, and I hope as a whole we can move towards that better
future.
I hear your concerns for the price of the FOSS4G NA tickets, though I'll
point out to people who are following along that it's not as simple as a
flat $1000 dollar rate. I encourage you to look at the registration
pricing breakdown when it's published for FOSS4G NA 2016, be sure to
apply for a non-corporate pass if you will not be reimbursed by a
company, and to apply for a scholarship if the cost is still too high.
Also, if you are giving a talk, registration is free, so please submit!
The Call For Proposals is now open (https://2016.foss4g-na.org/cfp).
Jeff, your presence was missed at FOSS4G NA 2015 and I hope that you can
come to Raleigh for FOSS4G NA 2016.
Best,
Rob
On Thu, Nov 12, 2015 at 8:40 AM, Jeff McKenna
<jmcke...@gatewaygeomatics.com <mailto:jmcke...@gatewaygeomatics.com>>
wrote:
On 2015-11-12 7:01 AM, Jody Garnett wrote:
I have gotten a number of private emails expressing concerns about
LocationTech being involved in several of the foss4g bids. I
guess I had
the opposite concern last year when there was the joint OSGeo /
LocationTech foss4gna conference. I was kind of embarrassed our
behavior
as a community - would prefer to see us as welcoming and supportive
(especially as we had a first time organizer that could use our
support).
Hi Jody,
I am very glad that you brought this up publicly. Lately I too have
received very disturbing direct emails, containing threats of "if
this happens you watch" "karma you watch yourself" "if we lose you
watch out" and direct bullying tactics, for speaking my mind on this
issue. The same people sending these threats will not speak
publicly on this, so I have asked them to stop sending me these
messages, but the messages continue, so I have stopped answering
them. These are "power-play" emails sent directly to me, but I will
tell them here publicly, bullying me will not stop me from speaking
openly about OSGeo's one event all year, the global FOSS4G. (for
those not following the 2017 conference discussions, you would have
to read a long thread to get caught up
http://osgeo-org.1560.x6.nabble.com/Call-to-discuss-FOSS4G-2017-proposals-prior-to-voting-td5234235.html).
As someone just wrote last night on another list, likely there would
be no one else that has attended more FOSS4G events, regional,
global, anything, than myself. I make a point of going to a FOSS4G
event, to help grow the local community, no matter what size of the
event or where it is. Lately in my FOSS4G travels I have noticed a
return to our FOSS4G roots, where the popular events are very low
cost, aimed at developers, users, students, researchers, and the
smaller companies trying to make a living (a great recent example is
the FOSS4G-Como event this past July). Getting back to the topic of
your message: I too have been embarrassed by recent
FOSS4G-NorthAmerica events; I was shocked to see the 1,000 USD
registration fee there.
But I was not too upset, because no one is traveling the small
FOSS4Gs like me to see the difference, and I didn't see complaints
voiced from the local NorthAmerican community. LocationTech
involved in FOSS4G-NA is a good thing, to promote business and give
those businesses a stage; the core goal of LocationTech.
However now we are in the process for deciding the global FOSS4G
event for 2017, OSGeo's flagship event, attended by the
international community, and we must be very careful. Working with
foundations is good (hence all of OSGeo's great MoUs), and I'll use
the upcoming example that the 2016 team is considering, giving
LocationTech a 90 minute slot in the program for their projects (and
the same for OSGeo, UN, likely OGC, and other organizations). This
is a wonderful way for OSGeo's FOSS4G event to involve other
organizations. I hope that LocationTech will also give OSGeo a 90
minute slot in their big conference someday as well; this would be
exactly what I see as best-case scenario.
On the other hand, not signing an MoU, and then just contacting all
of our 2017 bidders, is quite a different method to get to the
table. Instead of a long-standing MoU agreement that would foster
the relationship throughout the years, as we have with so many
organizations, we are faced with a decision now that involves both
foundations and 1,000,000 USD (the annual FOSS4G event generates a
lot of revenue, making this very attractive to professional
conference companies all over the world, I was phoned yesterday by
one from Europe, for example). The money is there, huge money, and
huge exposure for these companies. And their jobs are on the line,
in their minds. Hence this situation we are forced to deal with
now, and these nasty private messages being sent to me.
Let's try to remain positive though, as we have 3 great bids for
FOSS4G 2017, and a solid team working hard already to make
FOSS4G-2016 in Bonn another amazing event. OSGeo has never been so
active and vibrant as so many initiatives and location chapters grow
all around the world.
Thanks for listening, and thank you Jody for bringing this topic to
the public lists.
-jeff
--
Jeff McKenna
President, OSGeo
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Jeff_McKenna
