[OSGeo-Discuss] The New Board to be and Global representation
Hi All, some new blood is added to the OSGeo charter members, and now we are poised to get new board members too. If one can remember, there was a discussion on the geographical representation of the board members after the last election. It is pertinent to have a global representation of OSGeo board members. I hope the election to Board members will yield results that will represent a global interest of OSGeo. In spite of the fact that internet is nearly erasing the political boundaries, still in countries like India, Geospatial technologies are yet to make a mark in semi-urban and rural societies. OSGeo Coding verses OSGeo software usage(ratio): Unlike the developed world where the ratio is evenly matched or slightly tilted towards users, in India it is very highly tilted towards OSGeo software usage. So the priorities are different in promoting OSGeo. Cheers Ravi Kumar ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] The New Board to be and Global representation
Hi all, I have recently seen several discussions where the geographical representation sentiment, perceptions toward OSGeo being US or North America centric and so on and so forth get in (the way). So I could pick one randomly to react on. I'll pick this because of its title :-) We should not be blind for perspectives and try to deal with them with care. However, there is _no one_ I know that is trying to purposely make the foundation centric to any specific country. As Cameron rightly mentioned in a previous email, there are countries that are native English speaking and that makes communication easy at the global community level for them. This same issue can be a problem for others though and can help the bias towards the largest English speaking communities on this planet even if it should not. I know that our members from North America actually do care a lot about what's going on across their borders. It is frustrating to see they are put into a defensive position too many times. They should not be and we, as a community have to avoid that from happening. Again referring to Cameron's excellent email, we are a Meritocracy and not a political body that has to deal with country politics, disputed areas and global trade. This is actually the point that is most important to me when it comes to representation. I don't want to see geographical representation come into the discussion at all! :-) Every charter member of the community can make his/her choice based on personal considerations. I do consider that myself when voting, and I do consider giving a (higher) vote when it comes to balanced representation, be it geographical, gender or other factors. But in the end what counts for me is how much merit that person has and what we see that person brings to the community. So my call upon the community: forget about geographical representation as a driving factor or political means in discussions or voting! My email gets to you if I would send it from Khartoum in the same way it does now that I'm sending it from Rome. Do you care? Or instead do you care about the content? Focus on the last when voting; what is the added value of that person as a board member to you. Ciao, Jeroen On Jun 13, 2008, at 8:21 AM, RAVI KUMAR wrote: Hi All, some new blood is added to the OSGeo charter members, and now we are poised to get new board members too. If one can remember, there was a discussion on the geographical representation of the board members after the last election. It is pertinent to have a global representation of OSGeo board members. I hope the election to Board members will yield results that will represent a global interest of OSGeo. In spite of the fact that internet is nearly erasing the political boundaries, still in countries like India, Geospatial technologies are yet to make a mark in semi-urban and rural societies. OSGeo Coding verses OSGeo software usage(ratio): Unlike the developed world where the ratio is evenly matched or slightly tilted towards users, in India it is very highly tilted towards OSGeo software usage. So the priorities are different in promoting OSGeo. Cheers Ravi Kumar ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
[OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo Board nomination
Hi All, Its a pleasure to nominate this dedicated environmentalist on OSGeo board who is also probably one of the first to use GRASS GIS in India. Name : S. NARENDRA PRASAD, Ph.D Secretory , OSGeo India chapter Designation : Senior Principal Scientist Head Address : Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History (SACON), Deccan Regional station, 12-13-588/B, Nagarjuna Nagar Colony Tarnaka, Hyderabad 500017 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date of Birth : 14.08.1951 Nationality : Indian His involvement in use and institution wide adoption of Open source geospatial tools began in 1991. He was responsible to introduce GRASS on Sun workstation for the GIS cell of wild life Institute of India, Dehra Dun, India. Infact, using Grass, Environmental Impacts of major River valley project was analyzed by a group of researchers between 1992-94 and several other research projects of wild life institute of India. Subsequently, in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Science, (IISc) Bangalore, an interface was developed in Grass to read the raster files of the Indian Remote Sensing satellite data .This experience has resulted in an ongoing work at IISc wherein one of the GRASS mirror site is up and functioning. The most recent and extensive involvement began with the use of ILWIS, Open Jump and GRASS. In an extensively collaborated project namely 'Rajahmundry City (A.P), GIS', on showcasing potential applications of using Osseo tools was successfully completed. The stakeholders of this project included law makers, administrators spanning a wide range of disciplines. The use of open source web GIS tools for wetland conservation has been initiated by him, and is the first and perhaps the only Environmental Information System of the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India. A number of capacity building, awareness and other educational and outreach activities were conducted with the colleagues of the Osseo –India chapter for a number of users His future plans include a much wider introduction of the osgeotools in a large geographical area focusing on environmental applications. Cheers V.Ravi Kumar Charter Member OSGeo ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] The New Board to be and Global representation
one comment for Jorge, and one for Jeroen - and a half a suggestion (food for thought)... please see below... 2008/6/13 Jorge Gaspar Sanz Salinas [EMAIL PROTECTED]: 2008/6/13 Jeroen Ticheler [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Hi all, .. So my call upon the community: forget about geographical representation as a driving factor or political means in discussions or voting! My email gets to you if I would send it from Khartoum in the same way it does now that I'm sending it from Rome. Do you care? Or instead do you care about the content? Focus on the last when voting; what is the added value of that person as a board member to you. Ciao, Jeroen .. But, from the Spanish Language LC point of view, I wouldn't be happy if no one from South America is elected for the PSC (or whatever name we decide to the committee) because my wish is that this LC gets involved all the Spanish spoken world. But of course if we are not able to convince people from South America to participate on the community and we don't have people really working with the LC activities, is normal that no one would be elected by the majority. 1) Jorge - if I am a Norwegian citizen with a Korean mother and I live in Egypt and I am elected on the board, I would be capable of doing a lot for the promotion of FOSS in South America ...This will happen if I relate to South America and I like it (its culture, its people, its language(s) etc.). So I can reinforce Jeroen's statement: let's ignore geography in representation in the traditional sense. Actually: I can confirm that similar dynamics are happening in other communities I know ;)...it can get confusing at times, but it can work. 2) Jeroen - having some homogeneous spread of representation might still have a sense for issue like optimisation of travel costs to insure that the board can be present in specific areas around the globe, or other issues of this kind 3) ...in this respect, I am taking the opportunity of the message to ask to people who would be somewhere around Italy between August and September: would it make sense to have some pre-FOSS4G round-up in Europe ...I could have said Antarctica...but I expect to be in Italy in that period)? no official-formal-meeting: simply a gathering of those who already happen to be close in space, at a given moment in time, and with the possibility of repeating such an event when it is colder let's say...Southern Tuscany/hills+seaside...mid-September ? regards, andrea, aka pibinko http://www.pibinko.org Regards -- Jorge Gaspar Sanz Salinas Ingeniero en Geodesia y CartografĂa http://www.geomaticblog.net http://www.prodevelop.es ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Driving licenses for geofoss?
Ciao Andrea, If I may, I would suggest that we first wait to close out the test with one application. Getting through the process has exposed some interesting steps that took long in our experience. The same steps may be streamlined once we/somebody decided to replicate them on other packages. This is a logic and appreciate procedure... we all appreciate the efforts you put in this project. Last but not least, I also want to hear feedback from the first person who will get his/her license out of our test. Again, this will help in tuning things on other initiatives. While this *may* apparently delay the diffusion of the other packages, this will also help whoever will commit to this to do it better on a second round. My point of view was just to have a look at what a GIS should have to be used for the ECDL, and eventually organize our (JGrass team) efforts (during the next year) also developing the issues needed to begin to think at this. I think the requirements should be published and update on the dedicated wiky page, just to keep in mind the developers these opportunity. What do you think about this? Silvia ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Chickens, Boards and Export Restrictions
On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 2:33 PM, Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 12-Jun-08, at 9:20 AM, Paul Ramsey wrote: - Putting our policy online (presumably copied from Apache shamelessly) in a findable location, to conform to the legal norms of our host nation. I'll have to re-read Arnulf's note to understand more precisely what you are referring to here... we don't have the tax exemption in place yet, if that's what you mean. Sorry, I over-clipped. The export policy. P. ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Driving licenses for geofoss?
ciao Silvia - this is to respond to the second part of your mail: 2008/6/13 Silvia Franceschi [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Ciao Andrea, Last but not least, I also want to hear feedback from the first person who will get his/her license out of our test. Again, this will help in tuning things on other initiatives. While this *may* apparently delay the diffusion of the other packages, this will also help whoever will commit to this to do it better on a second round. My point of view was just to have a look at what a GIS should have to be used for the ECDL, and eventually organize our (JGrass team) efforts (during the next year) also developing the issues needed to begin to think at this. I think the requirements should be published and update on the dedicated wiky page, just to keep in mind the developers these opportunity. What do you think about this? I think that ECDL is one of the vehicles to promote open source (GIS) as a concept and a tool. We also have (and are using) other vehicles, which are on par, or above, ECDL currently in terms of effectiveness. As an association (GFOSS.it) we are trying to balance various ideas and initiatives to keep the process alive and gradually more mature. Clearly, this requires interaction by different roles: developers, users, etc etc. To get back to ECDL: surely this will progress (and we need an updated wiki page to document the status, as the one we have now is outdated). In the meantime, let's simply keep the communication open: at the end of a joint evaluation, we may find that JGRASS could spearhead other types of promotion. This is really a late Friday mail, and I'll be off.. we can continue next week. Unfortunately I am not sure of making it to Bolsena (as under discussion on another thread). Stefano Costa will be there on Monday, and I guess this can be a topic for live discussion with him. Un saluto e buon fine settimana (=regards, and have a nice week-end) Andrea aka pibinko http://www.pibinko.org ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] The New Board to be and Global representation
On 13-Jun-08, at 1:26 AM, Jorge Gaspar Sanz Salinas wrote: Hi I can't be more agree with we should seek the best people to represent the foundation, based on the merits and commitment with the usual free software values, rather than a geographic representation. Of course having elected people from all over the world should be a sign that FOSS4G is spreading and OSGeo is getting more and more broader. Since there are only a few open positions for board elections each year, it will take some time to see any long term movement in representation either way. In addition to to merits and commitment I would also add vision to the list of positive attributes for board members. One thing that I think would be useful right away would be to start a group made up of one representative from each local chapter - a sort of global council. This doesn't have to be a new or separate mailing list, but could be. Just having a group to go to for sharing thoughts, ideas and vision would be really valuable. Sound good? Tyler ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] The New Board to be and Global representation
I see the annual FOSS4G conference as very important for meeting active OSGeo members from around the world. To me these meetings are directly related to the board to be and global representation. This year's South Africa conference (and the following one in Australia) will create many new relationships in the community, and I have no doubt that these relationships will affect OSGeo's representation. --jeff ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
