OSGeo at GeoWeb - PR opportunity

Autodesk will be donating the benefits of sponsoring the GeoWeb
conference (Vancouver July 24-28) to OSGeo.

We've been contacted by the conference organizers, who want to issue a
press release on Autodesk's involvement and sponsorship.

We'd like to suggest that they shift the spotlight a bit to shine on
OSGeo instead, and have the release talk about OSGeo involvement and
sponsorship. I've suggested that they get a quote from Dave, who I
believe will be speaking there.

I see this as a good way to get some free publicity for OSGeo.

Make sense? Any objections?

Peter

We'd like to suggest that they shift the spotlight a bit to shine on
OSGeo instead, and have the release talk about OSGeo involvement and
sponsorship. I've suggested that they get a quote from Dave, who I
believe will be speaking there.

I am hoping to attend this conference as well. The only other person that I
knew was attending was Michael. I assume that we would then have two slots,
one that Michael got for us (??) for OSGeo and was going to use, and then the
Autodesk-related one. Guess we need to clear that up...

Tyler

Very cool.

The one concern I have specifically about the press release is balancing nicely between Autodesk's sponsorship and OSGeo promotion. Namely I'm not sure that we want it to be 'OSGeo Sponsored'. Like then it would appear that OSGeo has all this money to spend, just to promote itself. Like it makes it seem a lot less grass roots, like it's the money behind it that matters, and not the participation.

I think we could play it something like Autodesk sponsoring as they feel the 'GeoWeb' won't truly take off without an open source presence. Like basically play up that Autodesk is taking on this sponsorship in order to properly promote all the great OS software out there. Something like 'AutoDesk boosts OSGeo presence at GeoWeb'.

I don't feel I'm being very articulate here, but basically to me there's a bit of a cognitive dissonance if OSGeo is actually sponsoring the conference, that sponsorship should be autodesk's, as a big company that can make that happen, and then use all the individual opportunities to promote OSGeo.

I'd be happy to help out with some of the wording for the press release. The topic of 'open source importance to the geospatial web' is one I like riffing on.

Chris

Peter Moran wrote:

Autodesk will be donating the benefits of sponsoring the GeoWeb
conference (Vancouver July 24-28) to OSGeo.

We've been contacted by the conference organizers, who want to issue a
press release on Autodesk's involvement and sponsorship.

We'd like to suggest that they shift the spotlight a bit to shine on
OSGeo instead, and have the release talk about OSGeo involvement and
sponsorship. I've suggested that they get a quote from Dave, who I
believe will be speaking there.

I see this as a good way to get some free publicity for OSGeo.

Make sense? Any objections?

Peter

--
Chris Holmes
The Open Planning Project
http://topp.openplans.org