Board Member Nominations 2014

The following nominations have been received for the OSGeo Board in 2014 through the Election 2014 process.


 * The nomination period ends on 23 August 2014.
 * This list is presented in the order nominations were received.
 * Incumbent board members are marked with an asterisk (*).
 * Candidate statements and support by OSGeo participants or members, if they have been provided, are linked to immediately after the candidate name as a bulleted list.

Massimiliano Cannata

 * Nomination by: Venkatesh Raghavan

Prof. Massimiliano Cannata (aka Maxi) has been active with the FOSS4G community since 2004 Bangkok, Thailand. He has been deeply involved in OSGeo since its inception and was elected as a Charter Member in 2012. Over the last decade he has been a regular presenter, workshop lecturer, code sprinter, and organizer of academic sessions in numerous international and regional conferences and events. He has led the development of several FOSS4G tools like istSOS, GeoShield etc. He is also an active contributor and PSC member of GRASS GIS and ZOO-Project. He has contributed to FOSS4G education through development of courses, training material and support of international students at his university. He has been team leader in several national and multi-national R&D projects through which he has actively promoted transfer of FOSS4G technologies to the developing world in Asia, Africa and South America. He presently serves as the Head of Geomatics Department at SUPSI (University of Applied Sciences of Southern Switzerland). He is a great organizer and leader, and the OSGeo Foundation and Board stand to gain immensely though his expertise and experience. Brief details of his vast activities are mentioned in [1] and [2] below.


 * 1) http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Maxi71
 * 2) https://www.linkedin.com/pub/massimiliano-cannata/17/46/45a

Endorsements and discussion


 * Nomination from Venkatesh Raghavan

Michael Smith

 * Nomination by: Daniel Morissette

Mike works for the US Army Corps of Engineers Remote Sensing GIS Center and has been a long time power user, supporter and contributor of MapServer, GDAL/OGR and other OSGeo projects. He is a member of the MapServer PSC and is also one of the instigators behind the PDAL project, the GDAL of Point Clouds. In addition to his experience with the OSGeo projects and community, he would bring to the board the perspective of government organizations, which is a very important group of users and contributors of OSGeo software that needs to be represented on the board in my opinion.

He is a FOSS4G regular (he has not missed one since the 2003 MapServer Users Meeting), and was an active participant and supporter of the FOSS4G WMS Benchmarking exercise for several years.

Finally, Mike has been following the activities of the board for the last few years (at least), often present as a quiet observer in IRC board meetings and even in one of the face to face meetings, so I believe he is well aware of the way OSGeo operates and prepared for the challenges of serving on the board.

See also http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Msmitherdc

 Endorsements and discussion


 * Nomination by Daniel Morissette

Landon Blake

 * Nomination by: Daniel Morissette

I would like to nominate Landon Blake for the OSGeo board election.

I have always been impressed with Landon's commitment and thoroughness in all his contributions to OSGeo over the years, and I think those attributes would make him a very valuable board member.

Landon is the Board Representative for the OSGeo California Local Chapter and has been a very active OSGeo charter member since 2007. His contributions to OSGeo include leading the production of a few editions of the OSGeo Journal and Annual report (quite a job!), working with projects in OSGeo Labs to help them prepare for incubation, and more recently acting as mentor for the incubation of the Orfeo Toolbox (OTB) project.

Finally, on the software development front, Landon is also one of the main contributors of the OpenJUMP project.

Landon's OSGeo profile is available at http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Surveyor

 Endorsements and discussion


 * Nomination by Daniel Morissette

Vasile Craciunescu

 * Nomination by: Gérald Fenoy

Vasile Crăciunescu [1] is a very active FOSS4G promoter and uses his free time to maintain and enhance geo-spatial.org [2], a collaborative effort by and for the Romanian community to facilitate the sharing of geospatial knowledge and the discovery and publishing of free geographic datasets and maps. Started in 2009, geo-spatial.org then became the local chapter of OSGeo in Romania. Over the last eight years, he has been involved in the organization of different OSGeo/FOSS4G events (e.g. 15 Romanian FOSS4G workshops, chairman at FOSS4G-CEE 2013, organizing committee member at FOSS4G-Europe 2014, OSGeo conference committee member since 2013, OSGeo charter member since 2012). For the last three years he is teaching FOSS4G-based techniques at the Faculty of Geography - University of Bucharest in the first Romanian ICA-OSGeo Lab [3].

Vasile is currently a researcher at the Romanian National Meteorological Administration, working in the Remote Sensing & GIS Laboratory since 2001. He is in charge of the scientific and operational activities in Meteo Romania related to rapid mapping, air quality data integration, spatial data infrastructure and web mapping. He has a good experience in working and leading national, EU and ESA research projects. Since 2011 he is the Romanian representative in the Copernicus User Forum (the European Earth observation program formerly known as GMES) and the representative of Meteo Romania at OGC.

Vasile is an OSGeo leader for his dedication to the Foundation, from the community to the conference organization levels. The OSGeo Board can benefit of his valuable experience and knowledge.


 * 1) http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Vasile
 * 2) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RxxoCQEyPU2krisEMniTyn-WQhzfrD1z24FzPtdqHmI/edit?usp=sharing
 * 3) http://opengis.unibuc.ro

 Endorsements and discussion


 * Nomination by  Gérald Fenoy