Henk, I do not want to argue since this just a personal opinion from someone that has gone just to one SOTM and only thanks to the OSI Scholarship, but:
What was the election criteria? I guess easy access by public transport, low-budget airlines, and visas for the OSI+OSMF Scholarship beneficiaries are not in the list. Even though one of the reasons to choose Girona over Genova for this years SOTM was that it has a Low-Budget Airline hub in its airport. I know about JetBlue, but we are talking about the _global_ State Of The Map, and not about SOTM US. I know the cost of getting to Europe for many of us is huge, but the truth is that most of the people that goes to the event is from Western Europe, and that it is not because the event is done near them, but because those are the countries with the biggest and most active communities (again some may argue that they have those big and active communities because events like this one are made near them). So we can not expect to have the event near us at the cost of most of the people interested in participate paying more to get to it or just no going to it. Can we expect the Department of Homeland Security to be any less "obstructive" with the scholarship beneficiaries than the agencies in Europe? I do not want to make an stereotype of the officers of this agency, since they have treated me so well every time I have gone to the states, but to be honest if the Spaniards denied 7 visas, I will bet money that this guys will deny the same or more. I agree in the fact that the US market/community needs to be developed/encouraged, and that the sponsorship of American companies may be a strong argument to take the event there, but complicating things for most of the most active community members does not sound as the wisest step to me. My two cents* Best Regards, Julio Costa * I say it again, no harm intended. I expect a certain degree of violence in the replies anyway ;) On 21 October 2010 17:09, Henk Hoff <toffeh...@gmail.com> wrote: > The host city of the 5th edition of State of the Map is chosen to be Denver, > Colorado. The event will take place in September 2011. > Here's the > announcement: http://opengeodata.org/denver-to-host-2011-state-of-the-map > You can read the Denver-bid > here: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/State_Of_The_Map_2011/Bid/Denver > Cheers, > Henk Hoff > SotM organizing team > _______________________________________________ > talk mailing list > talk@openstreetmap.org > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk > > _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
