Sean,
If you had read our proposal you would see that we made clear that GITA had
no role in the content of the conference, that would be all driven by the
LOC. Secondly, the national GITA organization has nothing to do with
organizing GIS on the Rockies. That is organized by a group of local
volunteers, and is co-sponsored by local chapters of four or five regional
chapters of geospatial organizations, one of which is the GITA Rocky
Mountain chapter. Conferences organized GITA by include include the GITA
Infrastructure Solutions Conference, Oil and Gas Conference, and GeoWeb.
Myself and other members of the LOC have worked directly with GITA on
multiple conferences, so we know first hand that they do an excellent job of
conference organization, which is why we chose them. Secondly, we wanted to
take advantage of their mailing lists to help with outreach and attracting
more geospatial users who were not using open source, which was one of the
stated aims of OSGeo for the conference.
Here is the section on GITA from the proposal summary:
The LOC has partnered with the Geospatial Information & Technology
Association (GITA). Based
locally in Aurora, Colorado, GITA has organized successful
geospatial-oriented conferences since
1982, including its own Geospatial Infrastructure Solutions Conference
(formerly annual
conference), which attracts several thousand people, as well as conferences
on behalf of other
groups, including the GeoWeb conference in Vancouver in 2006, 2007, and
2008. Ron Lake,
Chairman and CEO of Galdos and organizer of the GeoWeb conference, says in
his letter of
support "I am confident that the addition of GITA to the FOSS4G conference
will pay dividends
and result in an efficient and smoothly run event." GITA's excellence in
managing conference
logistics will allow the LOC to focus entirely on the conference program and
help ensure the
financial success of FOSS4G 2010. We also wanted to be clear that GITA will
not be involved in
program content decisions, that will be the responsibility of the LOC. This
will ensure that there
are no potential conflicts or dilution of focus on open source content, due
to the fact that GITA
also has involvement with closed source geospatial software companies.
Although, we may
though choose to leverage GITA's mailing list to help market the conference
to a broader
audience of geospatial users who may not (yet!) be using open source
solutions.
Cheers,
Peter.
On Sun, Dec 21, 2008 at 7:22 AM, Sean Gillies <[email protected]> wrote:
> Maybe bloggers and GITA aren't all that impressive to the folks who voted.
> I was frankly appalled that GITA was going to be involved. I've been to GIS
> in the Rockies and seen no evidence that GITA can run an open source
> conference or even "gets it". Perhaps the voters were overly sentimental
> freetard hippies who still remember the early conferences, like me.
>
> Cheers,
> Sean
>
> On Dec 20, 2008, at 10:35 PM, michael gould wrote:
>
> Or maybe Barcelona is a just nice place to run a conference!! And to eat
> and go out…
>
> ______________________________________________
> Michael Gould
> ------------------------------
> *De:* [email protected] [
> mailto:[email protected]<[email protected]>
> ] *En nombre de *Eric Wolf
> *Enviado el:* domingo, 21 de diciembre de 2008 5:47
> *Para:* [email protected]
> *Asunto:* [Geowanking] Wanking on about FOSS4G 2010
>
> I wrote this last night after mulling over the Denver LOC's loss in bidding
> for FOSS4G 2010:
>
> An interesting thing happened today. The proposal from Barcelona, Spain for
> hosting the Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial in 2010 won the
> committees vote. Right before the election, Peter Batty and I were
> attempting to understand what factors might impact the vote.
>
> But first, a little background. Peter and I lead a group (the Denver Local
> Organizing Committee – or LOC) that put together a competing proposal to
> host the conference in Denver. We put together an all-star LOC from North
> American geospatial bloggers, experienced industry leaders, significant FOSS
> contributors, US Government researchers and academics. We teamed up with the
> Geospatial Information Technology Association (GITA) who would manage the
> logistics of hosting, what we estimated, would be a 1000+ attendee
> conference.
>
> In addition to our proposal and the winning proposal from Barcelona,
> submissions were made from Beijing, China and Utrecht, The Netherlands. We
> had a great deal of confidence going into the vote. Our proposal was very
> professional and extremely well organized and directly addressed the issues
> mentioned in the RFP. This was born out in the fact that we had less than
> half the number of questions posed to the other bidding groups in the first
> round of questions and significantly less time was spent discussing issues
> with our proposal in the final IRC discussion.
>
> We had a fantastic proposal, a great organizing committee and the support
> of a well-respected organization handling the logistics. So, what happened?
>
> Like so many coincidences in life, I happen to be preparing for my
> comprehensive exams. One of the three areas I am being tested over is
> "Critical Cartography". So I've been reading lots of Denis Wood, J. Brian
> Harley, Denis Cosgrove, Gunar Olsson, Jeremy Crampton, etc., etc. This
> reading guided part of the discussion with Peter as the votes were being
> tallied.
>
> One way to look at FOSS4G is as a resistance response to the power of
> commercial software, especially ESRI's ArcGIS. Much of Harley's conception
> of the map, historically, was through a Foucauldian discourse of power. Maps
> reflect a position of power. Maps, historically, have been used to define
> boundaries and guide wars. But, in accordance with Foucault, power cannot
> truly exist without resistance. If we grant ESRI the same position of power
> as Harley grants maps and cartography, then the resistance to that power is
> FOSS4G.
>
> In the US, we specifically value capitalism and commercialism. We admire,
> as heroes, men like Bill Gates and Jack Dangermond. Open Source software
> consistently struggles against the Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt generated by
> the commercial software developers. We feel the need for support structures
> of technical support and legal entities to sue. Consider the roe against
> Dell when they outsourced their customer service to India. Americans would
> get irate if they heard someone with a foreign accent on the end of the
> line. But for the rest of the world, commercial support ALWAYS has a foreign
> accent – an American accent! Americans like power – and they mistake it for
> security. No one ever got fired for buying IBM. And no one ever will get
> fired for buying ESRI.
>
> The Denver LOC proposed a large, commercially-focused FOSS4G 2010
> conference. This proposal very much reflected the American values. Let's
> find a way to marry open source with commercial interests! We'll have over a
> thousand participants… and skiing!
>
> It's my belief that the vote worked out to a debate over whether OSGeo
> wanted the conference to become just another part of the American power
> structure or to use it to grow the resistance where it is strongest. Even
> the choice of Barcelona over Utrecht seems to support his argument.
> Utrecht's proposal, like the Denver proposal, was very thorough and well
> supported by both commercial and non-commercial interests. While Utrecht
> would have kept the conference in Europe, it wouldn't have fostered
> resistance to Western, capitalist values and the power represented by ESRI
> to the same degree as much as Barcelona.
>
> It is important to note that the Beijing organizing committee challenges
> with language barriers. Further, they estimated that only 10% of the
> attendees would be international. So their proposal looked much more like a
> regional conference and less like the international conference OSGeo was
> looking for.
>
> The resistance to American commercial power in geospatial software is
> created through the efforts of individuals and organizations. The resistance
> is frequently due economic exclusion from the power of ESRI software. But
> even in many corners of American academics, we see this resistance, usually
> due to Redmond's inability to respond to their needs. It is appropriate that
> OSGeo chose to keep FOSS4G out of America. The resistance needs to build.
>
> So, how do we reconcile the power and resistance? Maybe America can help
> the world understand the value of Free Geospatial Data while starting to
> listen to the rest of the world (or even the local voices) about the utility
> of FOSS4G. Maybe Americans can begin to understand that an investment in
> FOSS improves the quality and capability. Perhaps FOSS does entail hiring
> more intelligent IT people – but that investment pays off in the long run.
>
> Just some thoughts… See you in Sydney in 2009 and Barcelona in 2010!
> -=--=---=----=----=---=--=-=--=---=----=---=--=-=-
> Eric B. Wolf 720-209-6818
> USGS Geographer
> Center of Excellence in GIScience
> PhD Student
> CU-Boulder - Geography
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>
>
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>
--
Peter Batty - President, Spatial Networking
W: +1 303 339 0957 M: +1 720 346 3954
Blog: http://geothought.blogspot.com
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