Board Member Nominations 2008

The following nominations have been received for the OSGeo Board in 2008 through the Election 2008 process. End of Friday 20th June 2008 is the latest that new nominations, sent to cro@osgeo.org and the discuss list, were accepted.

Howard Butler
Howard is a long-time member of OSGeo, the chair of the system administration committee, a committer for Mapserver and GDAL, and respected member of the GIS blogging diaspora.

In short, he has it all, brains, charm, looks. Marry me, Howard.

From: Paul Ramsey

S. Narendra Prasad
It is a pleasure to nominate this dedicated environmentalist on OSGeo board who is also probably one of the first to use GRASS GIS in India.

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 wildlife 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 'OSGeo, TheIndia chapter'. His future plans include a much wider introduction of the Open Source Geospatial software in a large geographical area focusing on environmental applications.

From: Ravi Kumar

Arnulf Christl
Arnulf Christl is one of the founding members of OSGeo and took an active part in developing the foundation.

In the past two years he was active as director, chair of the Marketing Committee and as member of the Incubation Committee he mentored the GRASS GIS project through incubation.

He actively helped to build the brand OSGeo in Germany and at European level by promoting the foundation at various events and conferences including the OSGeo Park at the annual Intergeo trade show, the LinuxTag community event and the AGIT conference in Salzburg, Austria.

As "creative leader" of the FOSSGIS (localized FOSS4G) he significantly helped building the conference to become the main German language Free and Open Source GIS event in the region.

A couple of years ago he launched the Mapbender project, which became the first OSGeo project to graduat. Although he does not actively produce code anymore he still develops the architecture design, future development and does the legal work.

As member of the OAB (OGC Architecture Board) and as WhereGroup representative in in the OGC Planning Committee with full voting rights he helps bridge the cultural gap between both organisations.

Through his work in both organisations and his interest in Free and Open Source GIS Software Arnulf became a leading consultant for spatial data infrastructures and GIS solutions. As founder and CEO of the WhereGroup GmbH & Co. KG he has a vital commercial interest in building sustainable business models around Free Software licensing and Open Source development models.

Taking all of the above points into account and knowing him to be a vocal and avid supporter of OSGeo I am sure that he will be a valuable member of the OSGeo Board of Directors for another term. I am pleased to nominate Arnulf Christl as director and hope you share my views!

From: Torsten Brassat, +1 Werner Leyh

Frank Warmerdam
I nominate Frank Warmerdam for re-election to the OSGeo Board of Directors. Frank's involvement has been critical to the success of OSGeo. His commitment to advancing OSGeo is obvious in his official capacities (Charter member, Board member, President and Chair of the Board) but also in his less official capacities helping with systems, doing presentations, helping to feed the website, communicate with the public and manage many other aspects that have helped moved the organisation forward. He has always been willing to put in time to dig into tough issues and to put his own effort into areas that he sees are important.

His reputation, history within OSGeo and his experience all present him as a good candidate to be re-elected.

From: Tyler Mitchell

Paolo Cavallini
1) Paolo makes a living out of consulting services on free/open source GIS, with a team. For over ten years now. This tells me that Paolo can run a business.

2) Paolo has a track record of publications on GIS. This tells me that Paolo is keen on research and documentation/sharing of results of what he does with his collaborators

3) Paolo lives in Tuscany, where he is originally from, but has toured for work and leisure various continents...he recently started maintaining a blog with a nickname, from where he tries to explain that Italy should be annexed by France in order to recover some of its mess.

The combination of these points tells me that Paolo is a global/local guy, who cares for where he lives, but could take off tomorrow for a different place (speaking three languages)

4) Paolo has long-established technical skills in free/open source

5) Paolo has proven, in his drive to stimulate the creation of GFOSS.it (first registered as a legal not for profit entity in Italy, and subsequently tuned as the Italian chapter for OSGEO), to have a vision to foster the awareness and development of open source software (and free data) in Italy, with a well-defined relationship to the broader European and "global" context.

5.1) Paolo has been confirmed as president of the association in Feb 08, and is expected to be in this position until February 2010. This is insuring a stable leadership in an extremely interesting phase of free/open source GIS developments.

6) Paolo is not perfect, and occasionally (working with him a lot in my role as vice-president for GFOSS.it) I hear the famous Animals song "Don't let me be misunderstood", typically in the Santa Esmeralda cover version from the Seventies...but he has shown the capability of working "on the barricades", as well as on strategic issues, and makes an effort to improve where things can be improved.

7) Paolo has a team in the Italian local chapter. This means that he will have the flexibility of balancing his commitments towards OSGEO with the support that other chapter members will be glad to provide.

From: Andrea Giacomelli, +1 Jo Walsh

Ari Jolma
I nominate Ari Jolma for the OSGeo board elections. Ari is a professor of geoinformatics in Helsinki University of Technology (TKK). He teaches both in the Department of Surveying and in Civil and Environmental Engineering. His teaching includes a range of geoinformatic topics including software architecture for GIS, simulation, hydrology, application development and more. He is also a programmer (released a number of Perl modules) and is focused on spatial modelling, decision support and simulation.

Ari has been actively involved in other organisations as well, including the International Environmental Modelling and Software Society, where he has contributed on the board of directors.

He has been involved with OSGeo from its beginning, particularly contributing to the Education Committee and also representing OSGeo/FOSS at events through presentations and in academic papers.

Based on his knowledge of FOSS & OSGeo software as well as GIS generally, his experience in education and other societies, and his interest in strengthening OSGeo's FOSS message -- it is my pleasure to nominate him for a board position. From: Tyler Mitchell