(Curse you, mail.app)
Peter,
Thank you for correcting me about GITR. My impressions of GITA are
unchanged.
Cheers,
Sean
On Dec 21, 2008, at 8:18 AM, Peter Batty wrote:
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]
] 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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--
Peter Batty - President, Spatial Networking
W: +1 303 339 0957 M: +1 720 346 3954
Blog: http://geothought.blogspot.com
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