[OSGeo-Discuss] FOSS4G 2013 Nottingham Update
Another of the irregular updates of the conference team! We have our first sponsors - Ordnance Survey (yes, another 'OS') Google, Edina, MapGears, and Metaspatial have all got in with our early-bird 10% discount sponsor deal. The rest of you have until the end of the month, then it goes up to full rate. Wall-of-sponsors page is here: http://2013.foss4g.org/sponsors/ We also have our first accepted keynote speaker, a major open-source geospatial figure - I'm not sure if its public knowledge yet, so I'll not give any names away. The first papers have been submitted to the Academic Track section. We expect many more, most of which will undoubtedly come in on the last day! The call for presentations and workshops is nearly done, the programme subcommittee are finalising the submissions process. We've also started to investigate entertainment options for our evening dinner spectacular, and I've been in touch with agents to try and get a really top-class comedy/musical act with broad appeal to our community. If that fails we'll give our committee chair a microphone and make him sing karaoke. The announcement of FOSS4G-NA's harassment policy has sparked some discussion on the committee, and we will be producing a code of conduct document to cover everything from harassment to dress code and timeliness. The dress code will insist everyone brings their t-shirts from previous FOSS4Gs! With the countdown clock on the web site now under 8 months expect many more exciting announcements soon. Barry ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] FOSS4G North America - Blind voting
On 17/01/13 03:58, David William Bitner wrote: Additionally following advice from other events as well as many members of our community, we are making the community review process for presentation submission author anonymous as a concern with how we have done this in the past has been the fear that many folks have of feeling publicly shamed with critique and voting of their proposals. These are only two small steps that we are taking to addressing an environment in the overall open source world that by the numbers is very unwelcome to women and other groups (while there have not been any overt issues that I know of as part of any FOSS4G, if you look at the percentage of female conference goers or developers in our community, we do have a long ways to go). David, If I understand you correctly, you are suggesting blind voting on abstracts without knowing who will be presenting it? I've heard that blind auditions has been successfully applied to recruitment for orchestras, (which makes sense), however I don't think it is applicable for Open Source communities. You see, in selecting Open Source presentations, I think it is very important to know who will be presenting, almost as important as the presentation content itself. This is because the presenters who will have the most insightful content, and who will attract the most audience are usually those who have built up a large, very public reputation, (as leaders of open source communities, usually with a long history of insightful emails, blogs, and IRC trails). I appreciate the importance of being welcoming to all communities. In fact, I think that successful Open Source communities are naturally welcoming as they have managed to attract developers and community. However, I don't think that blind voting is right for us. -- Cameron Shorter Geospatial Solutions Manager Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050 Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254 Think Globally, Fix Locally Geospatial Solutions enhanced with Open Standards and Open Source http://www.lisasoft.com ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
[OSGeo-Discuss] GRASS is seeking mirrors in Latin America and South Africa
Hi All, the GRASS community needs as soon as possible someone willing to offer a few GB and some bandwidth in Latin America and / or South Africa, because users located over there are experiencing serious problem in downloading the software (see below an email from grass-web ML). Please help! Thanks in advance, Madi -- Forwarded message -- From: Markus Neteler nete...@osgeo.org Date: Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 7:49 PM Subject: Re: [GRASS-web] Downloading GRASS To: Clarence Ndunguru clarence.ndung...@gmail.com Cc: Margherita Di Leo direg...@gmail.com, GRASS-web grass-...@lists.osgeo.org, Rainer M Krug rainer.gr...@krugs.de, Gavin Fleming gavinjflem...@gmail.com, Paweł Netzel pawel.net...@uni.wroc.pl Hi, (adding Rainer and Gavin) I am still in hospital and cannot easily do things as I wish in this period. Read on below: On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 7:18 PM, Clarence Ndunguru clarence.ndung...@gmail.com wrote: Hi I'm actually located in Suriname at the moment. It could be better if I downloaded from a source in Latin America. ok, now I get it. We should be able to find an GRASS/OSGeo community member in the GRASS user or OSGeo discuss list to offer a few GB and some bandwidth. Maybe Madi, can you publicly ask? The two guys who tried to download are in Congo DRC and Tanzania. ok, so still another South Africa mirror would be good. Rainer or Gavin: any suggestions? By the way, I have a web hosting plan with Bluehost in USA if this can used to setup another download mirror, I offer that we setup another mirrior on it. thanks for this. Let's see if needed. So, what we have and how it works (relevant for Madi and me): http://grass.osgeo.org/mirrors/ To clone the master server is now easy, one line of command essentially which points to the polish server. With Pawel Netzel who set it up, I already tried how to put the actually mirror name onto the main page but it was not yet beautiful enough for us. But that's a minor detail Best Markus PS: Those I have added here, hope that was ok. But I must be very efficient these days. -- Margherita DI LEO Postdoctoral Researcher European Commission - DG JRC Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IES). Unit H03 – FRC Via Fermi, 2749 I-21027 Ispra (VA) - Italy - TP 261 Tel. +39 0332 78 3600 margherita.di-...@jrc.ec.europa.eu Disclaimer: The views expressed are purely those of the writer and may not in any circumstance be regarded as stating an official position of the European Commission. ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] FOSS4G North America - Blind voting
On 01/17/2013 08:24 PM, Cameron Shorter wrote: On 17/01/13 03:58, David William Bitner wrote: Additionally following advice from other events as well as many members of our community, we are making the community review process for presentation submission author anonymous as a concern with how we have done this in the past has been the fear that many folks have of feeling publicly shamed with critique and voting of their proposals. These are only two small steps that we are taking to addressing an environment in the overall open source world that by the numbers is very unwelcome to women and other groups (while there have not been any overt issues that I know of as part of any FOSS4G, if you look at the percentage of female conference goers or developers in our community, we do have a long ways to go). David, If I understand you correctly, you are suggesting blind voting on abstracts without knowing who will be presenting it? I've heard that blind auditions has been successfully applied to recruitment for orchestras, (which makes sense), however I don't think it is applicable for Open Source communities. You see, in selecting Open Source presentations, I think it is very important to know who will be presenting, almost as important as the presentation content itself. This is because the presenters who will have the most insightful content, and who will attract the most audience are usually those who have built up a large, very public reputation, (as leaders of open source communities, usually with a long history of insightful emails, blogs, and IRC trails). I appreciate the importance of being welcoming to all communities. In fact, I think that successful Open Source communities are naturally welcoming as they have managed to attract developers and community. However, I don't think that blind voting is right for us. Cameron, I think blind voting is a good idea. The community voting is always just the first step. The program committee can then make the final (arbitrary) selection (just what we did for the FOSS4G 2009). So the program committee will have the final call and will make sure that the selection fits the conference. There things like not having more than one presentation from the same person or a certain diversity can be taken into account. Cheers, Volker ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] FOSS4G North America - Blind voting [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]
Cameron, Agreed. As has been discussed in similar threads, and as we found for Sydney, it helps the LOC determine relative popularity of presentations for room allocation. However, perhaps the actual final results do not need to be published. Presenters are either accepted or they're not, after deliberation by the LOC. There is no need to establish a popularity contest. Bruce On 18/01/13 6:24 AM, Cameron Shorter cameron.shor...@gmail.com wrote: On 17/01/13 03:58, David William Bitner wrote: Additionally following advice from other events as well as many members of our community, we are making the community review process for presentation submission author anonymous as a concern with how we have done this in the past has been the fear that many folks have of feeling publicly shamed with critique and voting of their proposals. These are only two small steps that we are taking to addressing an environment in the overall open source world that by the numbers is very unwelcome to women and other groups (while there have not been any overt issues that I know of as part of any FOSS4G, if you look at the percentage of female conference goers or developers in our community, we do have a long ways to go). David, If I understand you correctly, you are suggesting blind voting on abstracts without knowing who will be presenting it? I've heard that blind auditions has been successfully applied to recruitment for orchestras, (which makes sense), however I don't think it is applicable for Open Source communities. You see, in selecting Open Source presentations, I think it is very important to know who will be presenting, almost as important as the presentation content itself. This is because the presenters who will have the most insightful content, and who will attract the most audience are usually those who have built up a large, very public reputation, (as leaders of open source communities, usually with a long history of insightful emails, blogs, and IRC trails). I appreciate the importance of being welcoming to all communities. In fact, I think that successful Open Source communities are naturally welcoming as they have managed to attract developers and community. However, I don't think that blind voting is right for us. -- Cameron Shorter Geospatial Solutions Manager Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050 Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254 Think Globally, Fix Locally Geospatial Solutions enhanced with Open Standards and Open Source http://www.lisasoft.com ___ 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] FOSS4G North America - Blind voting [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]
David, I'm comfortable with the program committee's decision as you describe it. I do retain a mild preference for presenter names to be mentioned during the community voting process, but am also interested to hear what insights you gain from trialling this blind community review process. I do agree with all comments and reasoning so far that direct results of community voting shouldn't be published, but rather should be used as a guide to the LOC for selecting a balanced program. On 18/01/2013 9:04 AM, Fawcett, David (MPCA) wrote: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] FOSS4G North America - Blind voting [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED] The Program Committee had a healthy discussion about the pros and cons of structuring the community review process so that presentations are evaluated solely on the title and abstract description. We decided as a group that the potential positives outweighed the potential negatives. The community review process is an important part of the selection of presenters, but it is not the only input. The Program Committee will use that data along with their own review of the abstracts, knowledge of the speakers, the number of presentation slots, expected makeup of the registrants, and other factors to put together the best program that we can for FOSS4G NA 2013. It would actually be interesting if we could test to see if this review methodology had any effect on who submitted abstracts. That may best be accomplished by surveying the people who submit them. We haven't discussed it as a committee, but I personally don't think that it is productive to publish the results of the community review and will push to not do that. At the same time, if someone has concerns about how decisions are made, they should talk to us. The Program Committee is made up of some great people who represent various parts of the FOSS4G community. We are working hard, and our only agenda is to make this the best FOSS4G event ever. If anyone feels that they have a perspective that is missing from the committee, we would be happy to have them join the committee. David. *From:*discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.org [mailto:discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.org] *On Behalf Of *Bruce Bannerman *Sent:* Thursday, January 17, 2013 3:17 PM *To:* Cameron Shorter; discuss@lists.osgeo.org *Subject:* Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] FOSS4G North America - Blind voting [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED] Cameron, Agreed. As has been discussed in similar threads, and as we found for Sydney, it helps the LOC determine relative popularity of presentations for room allocation. However, perhaps the actual final results do not need to be published. Presenters are either accepted or they're not, after deliberation by the LOC. There is no need to establish a popularity contest. Bruce On 18/01/13 6:24 AM, Cameron Shorter cameron.shor...@gmail.com wrote: On 17/01/13 03:58, David William Bitner wrote: Additionally following advice from other events as well as many members of our community, we are making the community review process for presentation submission author anonymous as a concern with how we have done this in the past has been the fear that many folks have of feeling publicly shamed with critique and voting of their proposals. These are only two small steps that we are taking to addressing an environment in the overall open source world that by the numbers is very unwelcome to women and other groups (while there have not been any overt issues that I know of as part of any FOSS4G, if you look at the percentage of female conference goers or developers in our community, we do have a long ways to go). David, If I understand you correctly, you are suggesting blind voting on abstracts without knowing who will be presenting it? I've heard that blind auditions has been successfully applied to recruitment for orchestras, (which makes sense), however I don't think it is applicable for Open Source communities. You see, in selecting Open Source presentations, I think it is very important to know who will be presenting, almost as important as the presentation content itself. This is because the presenters who will have the most insightful content, and who will attract the most audience are usually those who have built up a large, very public reputation, (as leaders of open source communities, usually with a long history of insightful emails, blogs, and IRC trails). I appreciate the importance of being welcoming to all communities. In fact, I think that successful Open Source communities are naturally welcoming as they have managed to attract developers and community. However, I don't think that blind voting is right for us. -- Cameron Shorter Geospatial Solutions Manager Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050 Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254 Think Globally, Fix Locally Geospatial Solutions enhanced with Open Standards and Open Source http://www.lisasoft.com ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] FOSS4G North America - Blind voting [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]
The Program Committee had a healthy discussion about the pros and cons of structuring the community review process so that presentations are evaluated solely on the title and abstract description. We decided as a group that the potential positives outweighed the potential negatives. The community review process is an important part of the selection of presenters, but it is not the only input. The Program Committee will use that data along with their own review of the abstracts, knowledge of the speakers, the number of presentation slots, expected makeup of the registrants, and other factors to put together the best program that we can for FOSS4G NA 2013. It would actually be interesting if we could test to see if this review methodology had any effect on who submitted abstracts. That may best be accomplished by surveying the people who submit them. We haven't discussed it as a committee, but I personally don't think that it is productive to publish the results of the community review and will push to not do that. At the same time, if someone has concerns about how decisions are made, they should talk to us. The Program Committee is made up of some great people who represent various parts of the FOSS4G community. We are working hard, and our only agenda is to make this the best FOSS4G event ever. If anyone feels that they have a perspective that is missing from the committee, we would be happy to have them join the committee. David. From: discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.org [mailto:discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Bruce Bannerman Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2013 3:17 PM To: Cameron Shorter; discuss@lists.osgeo.org Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] FOSS4G North America - Blind voting [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED] Cameron, Agreed. As has been discussed in similar threads, and as we found for Sydney, it helps the LOC determine relative popularity of presentations for room allocation. However, perhaps the actual final results do not need to be published. Presenters are either accepted or they're not, after deliberation by the LOC. There is no need to establish a popularity contest. Bruce On 18/01/13 6:24 AM, Cameron Shorter cameron.shor...@gmail.com wrote: On 17/01/13 03:58, David William Bitner wrote: Additionally following advice from other events as well as many members of our community, we are making the community review process for presentation submission author anonymous as a concern with how we have done this in the past has been the fear that many folks have of feeling publicly shamed with critique and voting of their proposals. These are only two small steps that we are taking to addressing an environment in the overall open source world that by the numbers is very unwelcome to women and other groups (while there have not been any overt issues that I know of as part of any FOSS4G, if you look at the percentage of female conference goers or developers in our community, we do have a long ways to go). David, If I understand you correctly, you are suggesting blind voting on abstracts without knowing who will be presenting it? I've heard that blind auditions has been successfully applied to recruitment for orchestras, (which makes sense), however I don't think it is applicable for Open Source communities. You see, in selecting Open Source presentations, I think it is very important to know who will be presenting, almost as important as the presentation content itself. This is because the presenters who will have the most insightful content, and who will attract the most audience are usually those who have built up a large, very public reputation, (as leaders of open source communities, usually with a long history of insightful emails, blogs, and IRC trails). I appreciate the importance of being welcoming to all communities. In fact, I think that successful Open Source communities are naturally welcoming as they have managed to attract developers and community. However, I don't think that blind voting is right for us. -- Cameron Shorter Geospatial Solutions Manager Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050 Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254 Think Globally, Fix Locally Geospatial Solutions enhanced with Open Standards and Open Source http://www.lisasoft.com ___ 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] FOSS4G North America - Blind voting [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Folks, I support whatever the program committee comes up with. If they want to have a blind review and not have names there, great. If it does not work out the next committee can do it in a different way. This is not to cut off the discussion which I think is good to have so please keep it coming. But in the end it is the responsibility of the committee to take a decision and when they have done it I will support it, no matter what. Well, almost no matter what. :-) And I really support the committee to take decisions to make sure that the program is well balanced, no matter what the community says. This is why we have a committee. If we'd want to have a completely community driven (whatever that beast is) conference we'd hook up slideshare and play the most popular ones. What a bore. Cheers, Arnulf On 01/17/2013 10:04 PM, Fawcett, David (MPCA) wrote: The Program Committee had a healthy discussion about the pros and cons of structuring the community review process so that presentations are evaluated solely on the title and abstract description. We decided as a group that the potential positives outweighed the potential negatives. The community review process is an important part of the selection of presenters, but it is not the only input. The Program Committee will use that data along with their own review of the abstracts, knowledge of the speakers, the number of presentation slots, expected makeup of the registrants, and other factors to put together the best program that we can for FOSS4G NA 2013. It would actually be interesting if we could test to see if this review methodology had any effect on who submitted abstracts. That may best be accomplished by surveying the people who submit them. We haven’t discussed it as a committee, but I personally don’t think that it is productive to publish the results of the community review and will push to not do that. At the same time, if someone has concerns about how decisions are made, they should talk to us. The Program Committee is made up of some great people who represent various parts of the FOSS4G community. We are working hard, and our only agenda is to make this the best FOSS4G event ever. If anyone feels that they have a perspective that is missing from the committee, we would be happy to have them join the committee. David. *From:*discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.org [mailto:discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.org] *On Behalf Of *Bruce Bannerman *Sent:* Thursday, January 17, 2013 3:17 PM *To:* Cameron Shorter; discuss@lists.osgeo.org *Subject:* Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] FOSS4G North America - Blind voting [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED] Cameron, Agreed. As has been discussed in similar threads, and as we found for Sydney, it helps the LOC determine relative popularity of presentations for room allocation. However, perhaps the actual final results do not need to be published. Presenters are either accepted or they’re not, after deliberation by the LOC. There is no need to establish a popularity contest. Bruce On 18/01/13 6:24 AM, Cameron Shorter cameron.shor...@gmail.com wrote: On 17/01/13 03:58, David William Bitner wrote: Additionally following advice from other events as well as many members of our community, we are making the community review process for presentation submission author anonymous as a concern with how we have done this in the past has been the fear that many folks have of feeling publicly shamed with critique and voting of their proposals. These are only two small steps that we are taking to addressing an environment in the overall open source world that by the numbers is very unwelcome to women and other groups (while there have not been any overt issues that I know of as part of any FOSS4G, if you look at the percentage of female conference goers or developers in our community, we do have a long ways to go). David, If I understand you correctly, you are suggesting blind voting on abstracts without knowing who will be presenting it? I've heard that blind auditions has been successfully applied to recruitment for orchestras, (which makes sense), however I don't think it is applicable for Open Source communities. You see, in selecting Open Source presentations, I think it is very important to know who will be presenting, almost as important as the presentation content itself. This is because the presenters who will have the most insightful content, and who will attract the most audience are usually those who have built up a large, very public reputation, (as leaders of open source communities, usually with a long history of insightful emails, blogs, and IRC trails). I appreciate the importance of being welcoming to all communities. In fact, I think that successful Open Source communities are naturally welcoming as they have managed to attract developers and community.
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] FOSS4G North America - Blind voting
I think this (Cameron's) is a terrible, outmoded concept, just reeking if the old boy network, old school tie mentality. Proposals should be judged at face value, not on some preconceived notions of what was good before now. Bravo to the organizing committee for suggesting blind (unbiased) judgments! Martin Feuchtwanger feu...@shaw.ca 604-254-0361 302 - 1429 E 4th Ave, Vancouver, BC V5N 1J6 http://members.shaw.ca/geomatics.developer On 17/01/2013 11:24 AM, Cameron Shorter wrote: in selecting Open Source presentations, I think it is very important to know who will be presenting, almost as important as the presentation content itself. This is because the presenters who will have the most insightful content, and who will attract the most audience are usually those who have built up a large, very public reputation, (as leaders of open source communities, usually with a long history of insightful emails, blogs, and IRC trails). ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
[OSGeo-Discuss] LSIViewer
Hi All, This might be of interest for someone in this list. LSIViewer (Libre Spatial Information Viewer) is an online geospatial data viewer conceived and developed by Lab for Spatial Informatics, IIIT Hyderabad. This is a snapshot of current development branch[2]. This demo includes charts View, Digitization, and 3D View of temporal data. Vector data used here is of Kerala, India, Population values are extracted from censusindia[3] for the period of 1901 to 2011. Please send your valuable comments and feedback [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7jtsJXPhXU [2] http://vrgeo.in [3] http://censusindia.gov.in -- Regards, Mohammed Rashad K M M.S. (By Research) student Lab for Spatial Informatics Department of CSE International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad, India ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
