On Jan 3, 2008 1:41 PM, P Kishor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Andrew,
Perhaps you don't care too much about the relations between the open
source community and the "super elite and private VGI-dubbing" group
that met at Santa Barbara, but, if you do, please note that statements
like this are needlessly alienating.
The meeting was well announced in various forums, including, I
believe, on Geowanking. The meeting was open to everyone who submitted
a position paper and application and got selected -- they had about
35-40 folks from all over the spectrum -- private industry (ESRI,
Teleatlas, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo...), academia (too many to list),
open source (myself, Steve Coast...), government (well, at least US
govt. -- CIA, NGIA, CERL, Los Alamos National Labs), non-profit
(National Geographic...). I don't consider myself super elite nor
private, yet I was there. This was indeed the first, afaik, attempt by
academia to recognize this "phenomenon" that we, in the open source
community, have been living for the past many years. Nevertheless, it
just seems bad form to disabuse or denigrate this initiative in any
way whatsoever. Glib criticism is just that, nothing more.
I apologize, my query was mis-interpreted. It was semi-tongue-in-cheek
jibing - at least in the specific words used. I was asking for an
summary, but I will offer the alluded to, non-glib criticism.
I did think of the workshop as fairly 'exclusive' as opposed to
'inclusive', being that it was limited in audience size and required
approval by a committee (of 2?) to attend. This does in fact make it
'private'. I can understand reasons why this may be beneficial, at
least to promote a quality meeting, but at least admit that was the
reason. It was my own fault in submitting after the deadline and being
told the workshop was full.
And not super-elite? Look at the list of attendees you summarized,
bunch of super-dupers in Geo world! :) (and not in a bad way). And
every participant is affiliated with a large institution (yes, even
Steve with OSM)
Here is my summary of the two days of meeting. I hope this helps
capture what happened in that "VGI-dubbing" session --
I really do appreciate the very comprehensive summary. So far, the
endeavor had felt kind of like a "academia now deigns to acknowledge
this emergent behavior" (as you inferred) and, at least speaking with
in my experience in academia, seeks to affix a new label to it. Other
articles/blogs have issued the same sentiment. Was there any
discussion of the differences between "Volunteered" and
"User-Generated" GI, because they are not the same thing, but there is
meaning in the distinction.
I hope and look forward to more open discussion and presentation
around this topic and products from the workshop (and not just a $32
per digital copy article from GeoJournal. :) - We don't all belong to
research institutes or large companies that have unlimited access. )
Anyways, I'll curtail my glibness in future criticisms ;)
Andrew
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