OSGeo Advocate

= Introduction =

OSGeo Advocates are authoritative OSGeo personalities who have volunteered to talk on behalf of the OSGeo foundation. Advocates should be able to speak well, even better if they are entertaining.

There are hundreds, if not thousands of conferences around the world which have an interest in seeing presentations from authoritative speakers, with deep insights into topics related to Open Source Geospatial Software. Luckily, OSGeo is fortunate to draw extensive membership from around the world, and has access to such authoritative figures within most countries.

= Advocates =

United States
= Past OSGeo Advocates = This section lists prior listed Advocates who have not recently updated their profiles.

= Understanding OSGeo roles =

Below is an explanation of roles which Advocates might have been involved in as part of OSGeo:

[[File:OSGeo_board.png]] [[File:OSGeo_exboard.png]] OSGeo Board Members

 * We only have 9 active OSGeo board members in the world, which have been peer selected based upon their outstanding leadership in the greater OSGeo community.

[[File:OSGeo_charter.png]] OSGeo Charter Members

 * Charter membership is obtained through a strongly contested selection process. Members tend to be developers and leaders in one or more OSGeo projects, and/or OSGeo business leaders, and have a deep understanding in many of the OSGeo projects and principles of Open Source.

[[File:SolKatz.png]] Sol Katz Award
Every year, OSGeo presents the prestigious Sol Katz Award to one individual who has demonstrated leadership and contributed significantly to advance open source ideals in the geospatial realm.

[[File:OSGeo_chair.png]] [[File:OSGeo_psc.png]] Voted position in an OSGeo community

 * These people hold a position of responsibility within one of the OSGeo sub-communities. This may be a chair of an OSGeo committee or board member of a Regional Chapter, or a member of a project's Project Steering Committee (PSC).

[[File:OSGeo_coder.png]] [[File:OSGeo_committee.png]] Developers and Committee Members

 * This is where the real work gets done developing and coordinating development of OSGeo Software.

[[File:OSGeo_user.png]] OSGeo Community Members

 * These people are actively involved in one or more OSGeo communities, acting as practitioners, users, promoters or supporters of OSGeo software. These people tend to have a practical understanding about how OSGeo software works.

[[File:OSGeo_translate.png]] OSGeo Translators

 * These people have translated documentation for OSGeo-Live, and/or OSGeo projects. They usually have an established understanding of OSGeo topics and can present them in local languages.

= Process for becoming an OSGeo Advocate =

Anyone fitting one of the OSGeo Advocate categories, may put themselves forward as an OSGeo Advocate. To do so, you will need to:
 * Create an OSGeo wiki account, to edit this wiki (See "login" link in top right of this page).
 * Add a portrait photo of yourself using the Upload file link in left margin in each page.
 * Create a new wiki page http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:YourOSGeoWikiUserName, and populate as per User:Template, (copy and paste from the source so that you see comments in the template).
 * You can then add your profile on this wiki page, under your Region:Country, names ordered alphabetically by First name, using the following:

= Annual Refresh of Advocate list =
 * The list of OSGeo Advocates will be refreshed annually, after the annual voting of OSGeo Charter Members. This will be achieved by removing lapsed Advocates, then moving all Current Advocates into the Past Advocate section. All Advocates will be invited to update their profile, and move their profile back into the current Advocates section.

= Expenses =

This OSGeo Advocate list has been designed to help event organisors find local authoritative speakers. Events wishing to import keynote speakers should anticipate covering expenses of these speakers. Note that OSGeo is a volunteer driven organisation without paid positions of authority and OSGeo doesn't budget to cover travel expenses. Note also that unlike proprietary companies, a company promoting Open Source software don't earn license fees when a delegate is convinced to start using the free software.

When budgeting for keynote speakers expect to cover the following expenses:
 * Travel, typically including:
 * airfare
 * visa
 * travel insurance (including overseas medical, trip disruption, lost luggage, etc)
 * meals during travel
 * transit costs to local and host airports
 * Accommodation
 * standard 3 or 4 star hotel within walking distance of the event
 * high speed internet
 * Per diem costs
 * 3 meals a day
 * Speakers fee
 * typically $US 1000 per day. (Note that OSGeo volunteer speakers usually have a full time job and will be loosing wages for the duration of the event)

For a rough guide of travel costs refer to the US Department of State costs

Individual speakers may waive any of these costs if attracted to the event for other reasons, and final costs are to be negotiated with the selected speaker.

= Other Resources = Links to other organizations running a similar process.
 * http://www.ogcnetwork.net/node/1585