Fantastic comments so far - it's super to hear people thinking about what is best as getting SotM and the OSM community right will benefit us all :-D
>Michael wrote: >Maybe there are too much company employees member of the program committee? Great concern :-) Just to let you know, the 3 groups concept that I discussed in my previous email applies equally to the SotM working group members. We've shared which group we fall in to and will pay attention to this during the selection process. The stressful bit for me is that everybody always leaves it to the last minute before submitting their talk ideas!! :-P >Frederik wrote: >I think there's a dangerous metric in the minds of many people, where a >conference is better if it has a niftier web page, a more exclusive >conference centre, or attracts more visitors or more sponsorship money. Thanks Fred. This picks up on a few emails we've shared between ourselves over the last few months. So that you're updated with the latest: for SotM 2016 we have selected a university as it provides great value for money compared to the large number of flashy business venues in Brussels. The working group understands that the purpose of sponsorship is there to cover as much of the costs as possible so that we can get the ticket price as low as possible. This is always difficult to get 100% right because ticket sales and sponsorship is often skewed with most of it coming in during the last few weeks. The planning for SotM starts months in advance (I would love to be announcing 18 months in advance so that the regional SotMs have time to plan without having to worry about date clashes). Any surplus will go back in to the OSMF. I'm glad you spotted our nifty website. We have some highly skilled designers volunteering their time and experience this year - however if there are members reading this who feel a nifty website puts them off please speak up. We aim to maintain a community feel during the conference so if you feel this is not reflected in the website then it would be good to know this. >Richard >But I would really caution against contrasting "corporate" and "community". +1 It's all about the getting the balance right. Keep the comments coming folks - this is great stuff :-) Best, *Rob*
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