[OSM-talk-ie] [Talk-gb-westmidlands] Registration is Now Open for State of the Map!

Rob Nickerson rob.j.nickerson at gmail.com
Wed May 4 12:56:20 UTC 2016


Martín,

Thanks for the feedback.

We do a lot to try to keep costs down but we can always do more. The main
way we can get costs down is through sponsorship and, if you have any
ideas, we'd welcome your support. We can also scale back our scholarship
programme but we hope that at 2-4% of attendees we have struck a good
balance.

In terms of current situation:

1. We have a scholarship fund in place to help with costs. Feel free to
apply to that.

2. At 75 EUR tickets are sold at a loss compared to variable costs alone.
When you add in fixed costs the loss per ticket is much bigger. We can do
this because of sponsorship.

3. Our price is in line with SotM 2013 and 5 EUR less than SotM US 2015.

4. The hotel deal is available to try to keep accommodation costs down.

5. We welcome anyone with contacts to airlines to come forward but can't
arrange any deals with them as is.

Once again sorry that we can't get to the price level you want. Please
apply to the scholarship fund and send in sponsorship leads.

Thanks,
Rob

PS. I hope to be able to open the cost spreadsheet up to public access to
provide the transparency the volunteer community deserve. Please give me
time to discuss this with the wider SotM team.
On 4 May 2016 12:48 p.m., "Martín Ferrari" <tincho at tincho.org> wrote:

> On 02/05/16 21:56, Rob Nickerson wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > Tickets for State of the Map 2016 are now on sale. Get yours before the
> > price goes up (to EUR 100)!
>
> Sadly, this cost is too high to justify attending. I care about OSM, and
> I have been a silent contributor for years, but spending on plane
> tickets, acommodation, and on top of that 75-100 EUR to attend the
> conference, is just too much money for this little hobby of mine.
>
> I think it is a sad state when most libre projects I care about charge
> its own volunteers to gather and improve the community, specially when
> corporate sponsors could be offsetting this cost. OSM is far from the
> only one, I am just writing this because I am getting increasingly
> annoyed by the situation.
>
> --
> Martín Ferrari (Tincho)
>
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> Talk-gb-westmidlands at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb-westmidlands
>


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