StateoftheMap Organizing Committee/Minutes/2018/2018-10-11 Meeting

From OpenStreetMap Foundation

Most discussions of the SotM Working Group happen on GitHub issues (private repository). The meetings take place every second Monday on the Mumble server of HOT project. The frequency of the meetings might increase in the last weeks before the conference.

These minutes are no formal minutes but serve to inform the membership about the activity of the working group. There is no guarantee that all meetings are minuted. See also our entries on blog.openstreetmap.org.

GitHub issue numbers are given in braces.

Time and location: 2018-10-11 19:00 UTC, HOT Mumble server

Present: Christine Karch, Marco Minghini, Gregory Marler, Adam Rousell, Fabian Kowatsch, Julian Bruns, Michael Auer, Melanie Eckle, Mikel, Martin Raifer, Michael Reichert, Rachel Vannice (HOT)

Lead: Christine

Minutes by: Gergory

Welcome Heidelberg Team

  • Christine gave an introduction to the pre-existing working group members, so that the local part of the working group can know the names.
  • Introductions from the local team members.


Our work-together

  • Christine: we can make changes, but this is what we used to do in the previous 2 years:
    • Mumble meetings every month in the beginning, then every 2 weeks as we get closer to the conference, and when it's very close we usually advance to every week.
    • We use Github for our daily task tracking (between meeting)
  • Action: new members to send Christine (or the team@) your github account username and she will add people to the team account/repo.
  • We have team@stateofthemap.org (on Google system) but Christine would like to move to an OSMF-run mailing list for the team, which will be on the openstreetmap.org domain. Old e-mail addresses on stateofthemap.org will remain.
  • Martin: We have an internal chat system for Heidleberg (Rocket Jet, self-hosted), we could invite external people to this and it may be useful.
    • Action: people to send their e-mail addresses to Martin (martin.raifer@uni-heidelberg.de) to be added to that chat.
  • We use it a lot already to share links and keep people up to date. Also used for work, so it's usually open for the local team.

First steps until end of the year

  • Mainly the sponsor package needs to be created.
  • Christine can create a proposal for it, and we need to agree what is contained in each sponsor level.
  • We will also nee a logo to use on the sponsorship information.
  • Proposed logo has already been made by Michael Auer. https://gitlab.gistools.geog.uni-heidelberg.de/snippets/5
  • Logo is based on a sculpture in the old town called Brückenaffe (The Bridge Monkey, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidelberger_Br%C3%BCckenaffe)
  • Mikel: I like the idea, I wonder if we're open to itterations on the design with feedback. I can see the logo appearing complicated or not working at certain resolutions.
  • Christine: We don't need to decide today. We could have some discussion about this over e-mail and then decide on it in a few weeks.
  • Mikel: Good that we're thinking about this. Some companies will already be thinking about sponsorship of SotM. Do we have an idea of budget, and therefore the sponsorship goals?
  • Christine: yes this would be the topic of our next meeting. I will prepare something based on our costs for last year and the local.
  • Julian: more money from sponsorship will be better, and not orientate on the minimum, because we can afford more scholarships.
  • Mikel: in the past the budget has been written with variables on number of attendees (affects costs) and number of scholars we look to do. Scholarships can be limited by bandwitdth of people's time to support their visas. So we can make decisions on how many we can do the work to get and how much to support scholars that have extra travel costs to get visas.
  • Gregory: Profit usually goes on scholarships. The issue is that we receive sponsorships later than scholarships are decided on.
  • Mikel: HOT Summit will also be co-located which will give us some help too.
  • Rachel: We will have thought on what will be the optimum level of integration between the two conferences (from both sides).

Agenda Hackweekend in Karlsruhe

  • 20–21 October 2018 [1]
  • Christine: Two ideas, we could have an overview of all tasks and create a timeline. Other idea we could have a brain storm about conference format/theme and then present our views in the next meeting.
  • Meeting will not be making decisions, just a face-to-face for some descussions.
  • Melanie: we could have a mixture of both. We have some ideas that it would be great if we can sit together and discuss.
  • Julian: it would also be good to discuss how money is handled for sponsorship etc.
  • Gregory: Money goes through the foundation. Can be done with local company/people, but through OSMF is always preferred as makes it easier to keep track of why money is moving.
  • Melanie: when should we be there.
  • Christine: It starts at 10:00 am, but we can start when you come with your train.
  • 4 or 5 people will come from Heidleberg, some will only stay until the afternoon/evening.
  • Not nessecary, but please sign-up for attending the hack weekend (link above) to aid planning.

Github issues (#2, video reservation)

  • Nothing planned by local team. Michael will continue with planning this with the C3VOC.


AOB: design resources

  • Mikel: Are there resources for sponsorship package and the website
  • Christine: Yes, this is already arranged for Michael (who did the logo) to be able to work on them.

Date for next meeting

  • Thursday 8th November, same time.
  • Doesn't work for Mikel but general acceptance from other people.

Action recap

  • Action: new members to send Christine (or the team@) your github account username and she will add people to the team account/repo.
  • Action: people to send their e-mail addresses to Martin (martin.raifer@uni-heidelberg.de) to be added to that chat.

AOB: questions

Heidelberg Tourism Office

  • They asked how many rooms they should try to reseve for the conference.
  • Michael: we had a contract with a travel agent who did the booking for scholars. They also did a deal for others (with some reserved for that) but it was pricey compared to other websites so not many people used it.
  • Christine: 50 to 100 is about right. People who want expensive hotels this will be good for.
  • Michael: You might be able to reserve something separate to the travel agent in the youth hostel on the university campus. The C3VOC team will usually get the hostel booked for them.

Social event

  • For the social event, a budget would be helpful.
  • Michael: EUR 40 per person was paid in Milan.

Join sponsoring activities with HOT Summit, distinguishing SotM from HOT Summit

  • Should we align outreach plans with HOT Summit?
  • Michael: some companies will only want to sponsor one, so we shouldn't force or suggest.
  • Rachel: With HOT and FOSS4G we found we can have more power by approaching a company together.
  • Christine: it can be a case of where the money goes, we would need to arrange an agreement
  • Rachel: At this point should we be deciding if we should be more distinct. It's workable and has been done, and there are some benefits to it. It does create some logistical hurdles and some lines that need to be decided.
  • Marco: I'm open to this and it's exciting we're havign the events in the same place. Maybe we can have some preliminary discussions about this and it's worth exploring.
  • Mikel: I think some sponsors will want to assess both at the same time, so if HOT Summit has its prospectus ready, good to share both where there's an overlap.
  • Mikel: It's important to be very clear about the line between the conferences. From a sponsor perspective, funding FOSS4G and HOT together were often confusing
  • Gregory: Good points. I echo Mikel saying that orgs get confused (also HOT and OSMF/SotM), but Marco also said it was worth exploring. We could think some ideas outside of the meeting.
  • Rachel: We had some days where we co-located within the FOSS4G confeerence(some talks in the main programme were tagged as HOT), we've also had a HOT day(signed as such). World Bank contributed a lot and covered food, so that was covered directly. Funds beyond that went to the travel grant, but it was agreed that $5k of the funds was set aside for HOTs use for aspects of the conference.
  • Michael: I prefer clear seperation and different rooms. In Milan we had a lot of proposals and different tracks, in Hiedleberg the venue is limited to a few large lecture rooms.
  • Mikel: I would argue against going to more than 2 tracks + academic track. Good to make hard choices rather than diffuse the audience for talks too much
  • Melanie: We also learnt that from the FOSS4G, that it was tricky to decide between.
  • Marco: In Milan it was very important to reserve rooms for the community, we had 3 or 4. These were very successful (personally surprising), we often had to push people out of these at the end of each day.
  • Martin: There's a large hall in front of the lecture rooms and there are sections so you can have corners for Birds of a Feather(group) sessions, and this will work quite well for the ad-hoc community sessions.


Slides of SotM 2018

  • Christine: global team, what are the next steps for the slides?
  • Michael: I have a pull request waiting but there is a conflict of changes (to the website) that needs to be worked out. It's waiting to go.
  • Gregory: I also added the youtube references to some talks, is that what the conflict is caused by?

Academic track

  • Julian: the scientific track we talked about. How extensive it should be. Should they send papers that we publish. We should discuss and think about it.
  • Gregory: There was a SotM EU 2011 (not the annual SotM conf) that published proceedings, you could take thoughts from. https://web.archive.org/web/20151015065845/http://2011.sotm-eu.org:80/node/45.html As the website seems to be offline, I can send a copy of the proceedings PDF to those who want it.

The meeting ended after 68 minutes.

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