admin's blog

This past week we had our Marketing and Finance Committee meetings, so I thought I'd share a few highlights.

Marketing

The Marketing Committee meets every couple of weeks to discuss a very wide range of activities and ideas. This recent meeting carried on some discussion from the last one and introduce a few other small ideas. The main task that is underway follows from this proposal to review and assess the various target audiences of OSGeo and develop a communication concept for meeting these goals. Also, the project will create/improve various branding items such as brochures, logos, etc. This project is currently underway and expected to wrap-up in about a month. The results of which will be re-usable for a wide variety of purposes, not least of which will be fundraising - e.g. having a good-looking brochure to share with potential sponsors.

Another item we discussed was that of creating a Marketing Budget for planning how funds will be spent in 2008. This is a requirement from the Finance Committee before spending 2008 funds. The Board's approved budget included $10,000 (plus $5 from last year) for Marketing related tasks. There is also another $10,000 put aside for Web Development promotional purposes.

Finance

At the September 23rd Board Meeting a Finance Committee was formed to deal with day-to-day and long-term financial management for the organisation. At that meeting we reviewed some flowcharts for setting management processes. We spent a lot time also reviewing some draft financial reports (that will feed into our 2007 Annual Report) and will make various improvements.

But perhaps the most exciting part of financial discussion is related to the FOSS4G 2007 event. There is now a conference report online which is very interesting - there is great feedback, some lessons learned as well as a snapshot of the financial picture.

On that note, it turned out to be highly successful financially as well as socially. Paul probably says it best: Thanks to a paid attendance that was 60% higher than expected, refunds from our A/V supplier (due to the wireless network and plenary issues) and lower than expected food costs, FOSS4G 2007 will return a surplus of just over $110,000CAD to OSGeo. Congratulations to Paul, Sea to Sky meeting management as well as all volunteers and supporters.

This year's event team is ramping up its work now too, having just released its Sponsorship Prospectus (2MB). If you are interested in sponsoring FOSS4G 2008 or have questions about exhibit space, etc. please contact this year's organisers at: foss4g2008@peoplesa.co.za

Annual Report

Meanwhile a few parts of the 2007 Annual Report are starting to come in. I've been in touch with many of you already, but if you have an aspect to contribute to the report, please be in touch, as I will be working on this a fair bit over the upcoming weeks. Note that the Annual Report will be published as part of the OSGeo Journal Volume 4, work on that will be starting soon as well.

Tyler Mitchell, 21-Jan-2008