This page is being created to list possible uses of OpenLayers-related sponsorship funds.

 Click Here to see the sponsorship report for the GDAL project in 2007 and 2008.

Marketing Materials

Currently, OpenLayers is somewhat lacking in marketing materials. It would be nice to have a selection of marketing materials made available at conferences OSGeo is present at, and possibly others as well.

Possibilities:

T-Shirts

T-Shirts. T-shirts are a great source of community building, and can be given to core developers, and also used as positive feedback to community developers.

Cost: the GDAL project had T-shirts printed for FOSS4G2007. The cost was ~$625 for 50 shirts (a cost of ~$12 / shirt). Some time would be needed to design the shirts, but it is likely that our existing materials could be used to accomplish this by a competent volunteer. A run of 50 shirts would give us enough to cover most/all core developers, and some to spare. Assuming some costs for shipping to developers who aren't local, cost could go up to ~$750 for initial dispersal.

Improved Handouts/Brochures

There are currently some OpenLayers promotional materials floating around, but they tend to be out of date, and not particularly well targeted. We have a wide set of users, many of whom would likely be glad to allow us to use their materials to market the project. (See the OpenLayers gallery, for an example.) Creating a set of marketing materials that can be taken to conferences, etc. would allow for furthering marketing of the OpenLayers project.

Existing Material:  http://svn.osgeo.org/osgeo/marketing/flyer/project_brochure_pdfs/OSGeo_Brochures_OpenLayers.pdf

Cost: Unknown for improving materials, Need to look into printing costs (possibly co-sponsored with OSGeo)

Case Studies

Writing OpenLayers case studies would give users of OpenLayers a handful of ways to convince bosses that their support/use of the project makes sense. The 'creme de la creme' of OSGeo relatd case studies is the PostGIS Case Studies, an it would be nice to duplicate this effort for OpenLayers. Though a volunteer might be willing to do this, offering a bounty to someone who is competent with technical writing might allow for acceleration of the process. (No one has taken the mantle on for pursuing this on their own yet.)

Existing Resources:  http://postgis.refractions.net/documentation/casestudies/

Cost: Unknown. To be used to encourage someone experienced in somewhat technical/marketing writing to complete a case study.

Development Resources

Coding Bunkers

The OpenLayers project has a strong tradition of holding annual or bi-annual "coding bunkers" (code sprints in osgeo-speak) which are opportunities for OpenLayers developers to get together for a few days to a week to concentrate on core development issues and planning.

In the past, these bunkers have been made possible by generous corporate support from MetaCarta and OpenGeo (formerly TOPP). Sponsorship money could be used to further support these bunkers by funding or subsidizing:

• Office Space
  • Meeting Rooms
  • Internet Connections
  • Projectors, etc.
• Meals during bunkers
• Travel expenses
• Lodging expenses

Cost: Variable, depending on available funds. This item is especially flexible based on funding. Even small sponsorships could help to fund meals or discounted lodging.

Maintainership Role

Some OSGeo projects have had success with supporting a part time maintainer of their project through sponsorship funds. A maintainer would:

• handle mailing list traffic -- opening bugs as appropriate
• manage the bug tracker
• perform minor bugfixes
• maintain the project web page
• maintain the project wiki (in fact, this would be a great starting point for anyone interested in the maintainership position -- the wiki is currently is a disasterous state)

In the past, this task has been performed in an ad-hoc way, but no dedicated effort has been put forth to have a single person fill this role.

The project would benefit from someone taking this role, as would users of the project.

Cost: Maintainer for 20hr/week @ $25/hr = $2250 /month. This clearly only works if a sufficient number of sponsors are interested long term :) The hourly number is assuming the ability to find a low-cost maintainer, or an organization willing to offer a maintainer at a lower than normal cost. See  http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/wiki/rfc9_maintainer for information about GDAL's maintainer position.

Documentation Improvements

Currently, we lack tutorials and documentation. There are many many ways in which this could go:

• Creation of tutorial-style prose documentation
  • Getting Started
  • Using Google Maps with your own overlays
  • Reprojection and what it means
  • Using OpenLayers with other external Javascript libraries
  • Getting started setting up OpenLayers with your own data (A more complete version of MappingYourData)

• Improvement of existing code documentation to include examples
• Improvement of existing examples to more clearly explain what the example is doing and how it works

Cost: Entirely dependent on the task. Some of the tasks above can be prioritized: for example, documenting how to use Layer.GML to replace a Layer.Text is something that has ben asked and answered > 1 dozen times on the mailing list, and would therefore be an effective, but limited in scope, task. Estimation of hours ranges from 3-30 or more depending on the particular documentation task.

Organizations who might be interested: OpenGeo, Camptocamp? Not sure if there are others in a place to write documentation, suggestions welcome