I wanted to keep the community up to date on happenings with the SOTM committee meetings. Everyone, yes, everyone is welcome to join! Today we had a great meeting with fellow OSMers Ivan Sanchez Ortega, Will King of Geodata Solutions, Emilie Laffray, Richard Weiat just to name a few.
We talked about the current bids for 2010: both Spain and Italy are really excited to host the conference! It’s really awesome to see their enthusiasm.
As a committee we’re creating some criteria for the proposed host city. It’s not meant to limit the choices, but more help decide the best location. This makes everything very transparent and also lets unsuccessful bids figure out how to do better next time. It also lets SOTM organizers (and the OSM-F Board, if they want) to vote on the bids.
Some criteria could be:
* Easy access by public transport (plane, train, bus) with a maximum of 1.5 hour travel from major airport
* Availability of accommodation close to the venue
* Venue facilities (conference rooms, AV, WiFI, break out areas, right size)
* Venue catering
* Interestingness of the city
* How well the organizing committee will cope with the organization
* Outreach & marketing activities planned by the organizers
* Does the venue make SOTM accessible to a new group of OSMers (as opposed to the same people as last time)
With this in mind, the SOTM committee is extending the bid deadline another two weeks to December 1, 2009 and we will have a decision (drumroll please!) On December 7th.
We’re asking everyone to reach out in your circle of OSM friends to create new proposals. Twitter, FaceBook and the talk lists are just a few examples.
For information on how to write your proposal visit the the OSM wiki site here.
