StateoftheMap Organizing Committee/Minutes/2018/2018-11-29 Meeting
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: 2018-11-29 19:00 UTC, HOT Mumble server
Present: Christine Karch, Gregory, Marco, Fabian, Mikel, Michael (Nakaner), Melanie, tyr_asd (Martin Raifer), Vannicer (Rachel Vannice, HOT)
Lead: Martin
Minutes by: Gergory, Michael
Mailinglist: any problems?
Everyone should be registered, did everyone get the invitation for the meeting.
Invite not received by Rachel
Mailinglist: Blogpost and/or diary
Christine will prepare a post about why we change our e-mail address.
Mikel: Is that enough substance for a blog entry.
Suggestion by others to add news like our new logo, sponsorship package.
Sponsorship prospectus
Julian already prepared a version with the logo and updated content from github. Should almsot be ready, need to check with him.
Melanie: Prospectus is almost finished but Julian is not present today.
HOT Summit sponsor prospectus can be shared from Rachel, for us to see that. Suggested she put a link to it on the Github ticket. On Github in Issue 14, "Sponsorship Package" Melanie asks when the prospectus should be finished.
Christine: As soon as possible have it ready, aim for end of this week.
Martin: Do we publish it on our website or do we keep it private? Christine: We publish it on the website as well.
Sponsor Acquirement cover letter
Do we need it? It's text to put in an e-mail.
Mikel: Last year we had a standard paragraph, but whoever is making the contact can personalise it. Good to have something standard few paragraphs.
Michael suggests to have a templat which can be used but modified by those who send the prospectus to give their email a more personal touch.
Sponsor Acquirement who helps
Martin: Who does sponsorship acquirement? A few of the local group want to help, especially Julian.
Melanie: Had contact from lots of departments in the city of Heidelberg, and interest from maybe the mayor being a patron of the conference. They're interested in lots of ways to support. They have things to support with open data.
Mikel: SotM US in Detroit we tried to build that relationship, we had someone open the conf but they were too busy for anything else.
Gregory: SotM has had people from city or the university opening the conference.
Martin: Marco, did we have something like that? Marco: We had patronage. They did not support us financial.
Martin: Our major in Heidelberg used to study geography.
Christine: They might have a good venue for social event that we could use? Melanie: They could help us, and they're checking what options they have.
Gregory: Our guideline: If they give us something of the monetary value of a sponsorship package, they will get their name mentioned as a silver sponsor.
Marco: In FOSS4G Europe 2015 the local transport agency gave us free trips at the value of a sponsorship package.
Melanie: thanks for the comments, I don't hear any rejections.
Christine: It's a great idea, go for following up more.
Martin: Create a Github ticket to keep track of communications with the city. Ideas. Also past conf experience can be added there.
Website, when do we launch?
domain will be 2019.stateofthemap.org
Martin: 3 weeks ago the prototype was shown, since then I've tweaked a few minor things. It's ready to go live. Only thing I'm unsure of is the code of conduct.
Christine: We go on with our old/current Code of Conduct and we put it not linked-to at the top, maybe in the footer. When we make changes we will discuss and update as needed.
Martin: okay, we will be ready to launch.
Christine: When you are finished, write me an e-mail. I'll ask Tom for the domain to be sorted, it takes 1-2 days, very quick.
Mikel: Are you using the sotm2019 Github repo for the code of the website? Tom makes a pull/fork of the code and hosts it on the OSMF servers.
Martin: yes.
Martin: before we go fully online, I'll post another update of my preview.
Mikel: you could make it post to github pages anyway.
Academic, timeline?
Marco: progressingly slowly, as I've been busy. First draft of e-mail to be sent to OSM Scieence mailing list to invite people to be part of the selection committie. Will soon agree a final text, and share that on Github. Sure within 1 week or so we can share it. So in January we will have the core team formed and release a call for papers. With intention to run the call inline with the call for the main track.
Marco: I will give 2-3 weeks for the core team applications. Then we collect the applications, make a selection with the SotM WG (academic advice given). Then keep the same dates for the call for abstracts and call for deadlines.
Gregory: Can we avoid "call for papers" so people don't get confused thinking they have to write a paper or be an academic for the main track. "Call for speakers/sessions" is good.
Marco: Gregory: For the academic track "call for abstracts" is ok.
Marco: We had a long discussion whether to have written preceedings or not and how. We should leave that discussion to the academic selection committee once it has been set up.
Martin: We should discuss the posters a bit more. We had academic posters and non-academic posters last year.
Marco: We had both. The academic posters did not enter the competition.
Martin: we had an idea to focus on the posters more. In Milan they were a bit hidden away. HAd an idea to have a special evening when the posters are revealed to the delegates, and have a mini social event.
Michael: agrees
Christine: agrees
Social Event Location
Fabian: We were looking at the different costs if we have the social event in Hebelhalle. We came to the decision that we think that it would be the best solution to have the conference dinner on Sunday in Halle 02 and have a get-together or the poster session on Saturday in Hebelhalle.
Michael: The budget does not allow for two social events.
Fabian: Have the main social on Sunday. The Hebelhalle we don't have to tell till April.
Mikel: What was the thinking of Sunday instead of Saturday? Fabian: We looked for locations in September. The main social event location is closed and under construction. There is any other suitable location for our size and budget on Saturday which has not been booked yet.
Martin: Halle 02 is used as nightclub on Saturdays.
Gregory: We had the social event on different weekdays in the past, it doesn't matter.
Martin: It would be good to have some kind of event on Saturday as well in order to avoid that people feel lost in the city.
Christine: Martin: We also need a location for Friday.
Gregory: On the days we don't have a social event we can recommend restaurants or areas of the city where people can find others.
Martin: suggests to book Halle 02
Michael: What are our cancellation options? Fabian: Zahlungsziel 50 % until 14 days before the event, rest on the day of the event
exact numbers of people should be told 14 days before the event
Michael: I'm not sure we can get that much sponsorship. The Mensa couldn't book until 2019, so we could wait till they are an option? Martin: We have a meeting with Mensa next week, but regarding lunch not having a social there. Using a different location for the social dinner would be better.
Fabian: Halle 02 costs € 83.50 per person.
Christine: this might be something that the city could sponsor? Martin: Helle 02 wants an answer from us this week or next week, so we are under pressure.
Fabian: we've spent many hours comparing them and the numbers. We could get something cheaper, but there are lots of queestions under certain topics like catering or where people will fit.
Michael: we don't need one large room for everyone. Brussels we used an old brewery with multiple rooms and people spread out, although there were no chairs.
Martin: the trouble is that the main room cannot be used for eating, so the smaller rooms would get crowded.
Martin: we contact ?Halle 02? about cancellation policy and post on Github for discussion.
Melanie: I'll also make sure to talk to the city about options of social venues that they could help with.
Work together HOT Summit
Melanie: I hope we can learn about the different ways. We've discussed some things in Github and resolved a few things. We decided we'll collaborate on scholarship applications.
Rachel: You got most of it. I went ahead and put the summit sponsorship proposal in the Github discussion. We put in our ?microgrants? to avoid confusion, so I thought that was important to share.
Rachel: Discussion about the programme would be good, I don't know if that's for this call or another call.
Melanie: it will be important to note that if people are wanting to sponsor scholars that they can sponsor scholars that will attend both.
Rachel: we have had some sponsors in discussion (nothing certain yet) that would be interested in sponsoring both. It would be worth looking at how we can both do that.
Mikel: There's also communication that we can do. The websites are natuaral places we can link to each other, such as the sschedules showing what's before/after. They way we've managed this is good overlap, so it's helpful to keep thinking how we may help each other.
"Bridging the map"
Martin: the conference theme we thought of was "Bridging the map", not to restrict the conference in any way but encourage workshop/sessions/discussions between gaps such as different OSM communities or between technical and less-technical groups, and inclusiveness.
Christine: yes we want to have presentations from valuable topics. In Milan it was nice to see people from humanitarian sector are useful in technical talks because they see the use in their lives. I understand, you want to alredy have this theme in advance? Martin: First of all, there are a lot of communities that are using OSM or thinking of using OSM that could benefit from a better connection to the OSM communities. Noting concrete yet, we've just thought about it.
Mikel: I like the theme of the motto and their intention, it also invokes the bridge from which the logo came, and it's a feature we map! It provides a little bit of something for people to think about what they want to bring.
Marco: I think it would be nice to add a couple of these lines of explanation to the website with the motto. Maybe not now, but soon.
Gregory: You've got the right intention with it not restrict our sessions. It might bring some inspiration and help promotion on the call for talks, hopefully encourage some people to give a talk that they would have bothered with.
Program: building core team
Martin: Christine had an idea around inviting an external person (Cristoph Hormann) to oversee the programme committie.
Christine: I asked Christoph if he has some ideas for programme committee. He sent us a concept. It resulted in heated discussions even without Christoph. I decided to step back and go on without Christoph. I asked Martin and Gregory if they would like to build a core team for the next 2-3 weeks to join people who could join the programme committie. This is hard work as we want to collect lots of people from local chapters, different regions, and interest areas, then we have to find 10-12 people who can evaluate the proposals. Then we can start with publishing the call.
genral agreement
Christine: we have to think about this. We could meet to discuss this, perhaps a Thursday.
Propose the 13th December for the programme committe to meet and discuss. But should we also have a December meeting for the general WG? In this meeting we'll talk about who we know that could be on the programme committee.
Date for Next meeting
Date for program core team meeting
6th December for programme committe
13th December the general SotM meeting.
Review timeline until end of 2018, which tasks should be done
Main thing is for the programme committe to start it's work.
Social event venue to be decided.
Website online
start of Sponsorship Acquirement
Videos from SotM/Milan (Severin)
Gregory to work on this. Didn't realise they were still to do.
Publish protocol of last meetings
No review process. Look at it after the meeting. If nobody complains on accuracy, Michael will publish them in 3-4 weeks after the meeting. (edit later by Christine: protocol is linked in github issue of meeting, everybody can review it, until it will be published 3-4 weeks later, comments are welcome in the github issue)
No other topics to discuss.
Meeting ended +78 minutes.