Board Member Nominations 2009

The following nominations have been received for the OSGeo Board in 2009 through the Election 2009 process. The end of Monday, September 21st 2009 is the latest that new nominations, sent to cro@osgeo.org and the discuss list, will be accepted.

This list is presented in the order nominations were received.

Incumbent board members are marked with an asterisk (*).

Candidate statements, if they have been provided, are indented and provided immediately after the candidate name.

Ravi Kumar

 * As a field geologist I was enticed to computer aided drawing and then GIS more than two decades ago. Have taught more than a hundred field geologists FOSS GIS supported by exercises and notes prepared. Held the first ever FOSS GIS conference in the Geological Survey of India in 2005. Have been evangelizing FOSS GIS around India.


 * India needs sustainable GIS and only FOSS GIS can provide it. The solutions that FOSS GIS can offer are innumerable and impact more profound than ever possible in the developed world. Right from eradicating corruption by providing transparency in administration to empowering people with information. In short, it can do wonders to society.


 * OSGeo India took up a project for a southern city, Rajahmundry in Andhra Pradesh with the help of a Member of The Indian Parliament of the same city. The first phase was data collection and preparation of base GIS. OSGeo India believes in not just taking the (thirsty) horse to the pond but make it drink. In a second phase of the project focus will be on web-enabling various themes such that it will act as a bridge between citigens and Governament (C2G), cutting down a lot of red-tape.


 * Evangelising FOSS GIS in India is literally as per, Gandhi's quote "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win".


 * From: Ravi Kumar

Mr Ravi Kumar, former Director of the Training centre of Geological Survey of India (GSI), Hyderabad, has been evangelizing use of Open source geospatial tools for more than five years. He has taken a lead with a team of 3-5 professionals of geoinformatics from GSI covering the whole of India for capacity building in use of OSGEO tools and technologies. The beneficiaries include a number of students and Geospatial professionals. These professionals were from GSI, Research institutes and Academia. Mr Ravi Kumar has also taken a big lead in convincing law makers (members of Parliament) to initiate use of Open source geospatial tools for better governance of Rajahmundry parliamentary constituency. Subsequently, using these data sets a web GIS based on the desktop GIS data sets (www.osgeo.in/google/sample.htm). He has ambitious plans to work for adoption of the Osgeo tools for governance.

From: S. Narendra Prasad

Ravi Kumar has been one of the founding members and an energetic person not only responsible for the setting up of the India Chapter of OSGeo, but also at the forefront of spreading awareness of the Open Source philosophy and the potential (including showcasing a few pilot applications) it holds for a developing country like India.

Though not a developer himself, he has been active in OSGeo fora and has led the development of training and tutorial materials for a range of tools including GRASS and Mapserver. These materials have been used extensively in the training programmes conducted by the India Chapter and will soon be available for the community at large.

From: K S Rajan

Wolf Bergenheim

 * My involvement with OSGeo started with GRASS GIS, which I ran into while searching for an alternative for ARC GIS when I needed to be able to use a GIS on Linux. Since that day I was hooked. After GRASS joined OSGeo I've been involved with the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) program and a member of the SAC and WebCom committees. I was a mentor for GRASS in 2007 and represented OSGeo at the GsoC Mentor summit. The following year I was elected to be the Administrator for GSoC. This year I was also the Administrator.


 * I hope to be able to improve the OSGeo GSoC program so it will run even more smoothly in the future. I especially would like to improve on both mentor-student-project interaction and student-student interaction. This goes along my hopes of improving interaction and communication between all the OSGeo projects. I would also like to extend the GSoC program to work along with our other education programs, as I see it has many similar goals.


 * In addition to that I hope to help out in promoting OSGeo and GRASS GIS in education and the industry (wherever I can). I also hope to help build and improve the OSGeo website more in the direction that would allow it to bring in people to open source geospatial software.


 * From: Wolf Bergenheim

As OSGeo GSoC Administrator, Wolf Bergenheim has shown great leadership and management skills in getting the program started and sustain, bringing in young promising developers from all over the world.

Through the GSoC program, he also provides an important communication link to the Google open source software support.

At the same time, as a mentor and developer, he has an in-depth, hands-on understanding of the OSGeo projects' development process and infrastructure, as well as excellent knowldedge of geospatial science and applications.

From: Helena Mitasova

Markus Neteler*
Markus certainly does not need introduction to the OSGeo community -- as the coordinator of the GRASS GIS development for more than 10 years, current member of the board of directors and member of several OSGeo committees he has been an active representative of the OSGeo foundation since its inception.

He brings extensive experience in the management of one of the largest OSGeo projects and, at the same time, his work represents cutting edge research in geospatial data processing and analysis. From: Helena Mitasova

For his role as the leader of the GRASS GIS project, for his contributions for the foss4g community and for his role among OSGEO.

Markus is the leader of the GRASS GIS project, and has played a pivotal role in the revitalization of the project and it's community. Markus is also a founding member of OSGeo and has been active in building the broader FOSS4G community for many years.

From: Giovanni Manghi

Jeff McKenna

 * I must say that it is quite an honor to be considered in the same class as the 13 other nominees. Each one is hard-working and extremely dedicated.  It's a good sign of a strong and mature OSGeo community.


 * Well this is a good time to reflect on what the OSGeo community means to me. Without the community I would just be another geographer; but with the community I am allowed to share ideas, work with brilliant people across the globe, and hopefully help new users as they start down the OSGeo path.  And you know what the best part of it is?  I enjoy it.  I truly do.


 * I have been very active with OSGeo's annual FOSS4G event since its inception. I am very proud to be involved in spreading the passion for OSGeo to communities such as last years event in Cape Town, South Africa and coming up in Sydney, Australia.  As chair of the OSGeo conference committee, I'm excited about the possibilities for 2011 and beyond.  Every year the decision of where to host the event becomes more difficult, as our OSGeo community grows more mature and spreads across the globe.  How exciting!


 * If I am voted onto the OSGeo Board, I will bring my excitement and passion that's for sure, but I will also make sure that we never forget our roots - the community.


 * Thank you for this opportunity. I must also specifically thank fellow charter members Julien-Samuel Lacroix and Gérald Fenoy for their kind words in nominating me.


 * From: Jeff McKenna

Jeff has been active in OSGeo since being voted as a founding charter member. He leads the conference committee and has assisted in each of the annual FOSS4G events since 2004.

Jeff has been very active in the MapServer community for almost 10 years. Not a trained developer, he has made a point of trying to help new users in any way that he can: such as through documentation, installers (MapServer 4 Windows, OSGeo4W), and answering general mailing list questions. He is a member of MapServer's Project Steering Committee (PSC), which is responsible for the direction of the product.

Jeff is a frequent traveller, and enjoys spreading his passion for FOSS4G through workshops for new users around the world. He actually enjoys training new users, and has held workshops at many universities and colleges.

As he is now operating his own consulting company based on FOSS4G, on the East Coast of Canada, I believe Jeff has the experience and he will bring passion and a strong voice to the OSGeo board.

From: Julien-Samuel Lacroix

From my point of view, Jeff is very useful to the OSGeo community by numerous documentation he published all over the years and continuing publishing and by the support he provides for lot of people and even companies.

I think he get also a good knowledge about free software and about what could be useful for a new or already existing free software and what could be done to achieve some goals in this fields.

I also think that he has a pretty good experience presenting free software all around the world and this way could be able to promote the geographic free software as he did before but with the power of a board member.

From: G√©rald Fenoy

Peter Batty

 * I agree with others that we have a very strong group of board candidates this year, and that is a great sign for the strength of OSGeo. I would like to thank Tyler Mitchell for nominating me.


 * I don't have the long and illustrious background in open source that many fellow nominees have, I have just got involved with open source geospatial solutions in the past few years. But I feel I can bring value to the board because I do bring a different perspective from most other board members and board nominees. I have worked in the geospatial industry for over 20 years, and have been CTO of two of the top three (closed source) geospatial software companies, Intergraph and Smallworld (still the leader in utility GIS, now part of GE). I am well known and well respected in the broader geospatial community outside the open source world, I regularly speak at conferences around the world and have a well read blog called geothought (in fact I just gave the opening keynote talk at AGI GeoCommunity, the main GIS conference in the UK, and have been tied up there for the past couple of days which is why I have not been able to post this statement sooner). This puts me in a good position to help increase awareness of OSGeo and I do this regularly in my conference talks. As someone who has a background in closed source software but has used open source geospatial software for my latest startup, I am in a strong position to help explain to other closed source software users why they should switch to open source solutions.


 * I have served on the boards of multiple non-profit organizations, including the geospatial educational organization, GITA, best known for its conferences; the executive management team of several small and large companies; and the advisory boards of several startups. I have been involved in organizing many conferences, small and large, including the recent WhereCamp5280 in Denver, and was one of the leaders of the Denver bid for FOSS4G 2010, and we will re-bid for 2011. I believe I am good at helping organizations take a strategic view of where they want to go. I am from the UK originally but have lived in the US for the past 15 years, and have had global roles at both the large software companies I worked at, and have traveled extensively in those roles, so I feel I have a good view of geospatial users and markets around the world. From my experience working on various boards, I think it is important to include people with a diverse range of backgrounds and experience.


 * Tyler asked where people would like to see OSGeo in five years, and I would answer somewhat differently to many of those who have made pretty detailed responses. I would like to see that the number of organizations using open source geospatial software has grown dramatically over the next five years, and I would like to see a much larger ecosystem of companies providing solutions using open source geospatial software, and helping fund continued development. I believe it would be good for the geospatial industry as a whole to see greater competition, and I think that open source solutions are now mature enough that they can provide a much greater challenge to established closed source solutions than they have in the past. In order to do that we need to get additional people with commercial as well as technical experience engaged in OSGeo, and I would help with that as a board member. We need to also do this in a way that respects the spirit of the community, but I believe we can do that (partly by looking to larger open source communities than our own for lessons on how they have grown).


 * Thank you for your consideration, and please feel free to email me if you have any questions.


 * From: Peter Batty

Peter has been CTO of two leading geospatial software companies (and two of the world's top 200 software companies), Intergraph and Smallworld. In addition, his involvement on the board of GITA, the non-profit geospatial tech educational association give him a great scope of past experience at management levels and beyond. He has also been involved in founding various startups and is well respected in his communities of interest and actively promoting uptake of open source.

From an open source perspective he is an active user and advocate of parts of the OSGeo stack and speaks about them regularly. He is involved with the geospatial network around Denver in particular and has helped run events in the area. He has been a supporter of OSGeo for a while and is keen to help move OSGeo forward or the upcoming years.

From: Tyler Mitchell

Andrew Ross
Andrew has been involved with the open source geospatial community for the past three years, and in this time has demonstrated extensive commitment and leadership in his involvement with OSGeo and its projects.

As the director of the geospatial development project within the open source Ingres database, Andrew has become heavily engaged in the open source community both through his work and his volunteer time after hours. A few of Andrew's key accomplishments in the past few years:


 * Founder of FOSSLC - (Free and Open Source Software Learning Centre) - a non-profit organization dedicated to education about open source principles and skills to people around the world.
 * Engagement and contributions from his team to multiple OSGeo projects including GEOS, GDAL/OGR, Proj.4, and others.
 * Organized multiple events presenting geospatial and OSGeo material including Geocamp 2008, Summercamp 2009, and a number of bootcamps.
 * Mentor for a large number of interns involved with the Talent First Network, Google Summer of Code, and other student programs.
 * Encouraging Ingres to become a Supporting Sponsor of OSGeo
 * Active member of the Ottawa Local Chapter

In particular - given education is a key priority for OSGeo, Andrew as a board member of FOSSLC and of OSGeo would establish a strong opportunity for educational collaboration. The organizations FOSSLC works with include a number of Universities, open source companies, and open source foundations.

Andrew would bring a valuable and balanced mix of technical, business, teaching, and organizational skills backed by energy and enthusiasm.

From: Dave McIlhagga

Charlie Schweik

 * I've been involved with OSGeo for several years now, trying to help move our educational committee forward.


 * Recently, in the U.S., I attended the Gov 2.0 summit in Washington D.C. put on by Tim O'Reilly and others (www.gov2summit.com) which had a number of discussions/presentations with some of the major U.S. Federal CIO people, among others. (I'm planning on writing an OSGeo edu blog entry on some of the things I saw there...). But what was an overarching theme that was resonating throughout that conference was "openness as innovation." An example used multiple times was the innovation that has emerged (private sector) as a consequence of the GPS system as a "platform" for innovating at the endpoints. The importance of geocoding and geospatial was another theme, as was openness of data. People on this list, of course, know this, and many countries are farther ahead in this than the U.S.


 * The reason I raise this is because OSGeo and the federation of projects it represents is a global leader in this area and I see the next 5 years as a critical era for the organization.


 * To me, education around open technologies is key toward this future growth. Over the last 2-years, I've been learning a little about the challenges of leading a community of volunteers interested in OSGeo education. I don't know how successful I've been -- lots of demands on my time like everyone else -- but I've tried. We do have a searchable database of educational content that I think many of us should be proud of as an example of what we can do as a community.


 * But one of the things I think we need to do better as a community is somehow working with the various software projects on education initiatives. Education efforts will promote the software developed by OSGeo affiliated projects. In addition, we've started recently a conversation about trying to define an educational curriculum around OS Geospatial. In my view, we need to be trying to identify "core competencies" for OSGeo developers as well as users of the various software packages and move, as a community toward developing some system of developing these materials together, and sharing and deriving new material based on other material.


 * Empirical work I have not yet published in my forthcoming book on Open Source collaboration with statistical analysis of 107,000 Sourceforge projects is showing me that projects that are "successful" -- meaning they continue to worked on and are not abandoned -- are very often made up of small teams of developers. But what we have found to be statistically significant is the successful projects have at least 1 more developer compared to abandoned projects. This tells me that you don't need large teams to be productive. But you do need to be able to "link" or "connect" two or three people globally who have a passion for a project or an idea and also have some of the skills to tackle that problem. OSGeo has the "platform" and the global reach to make such connections in my view, whether it be in developing software, or developing educational material.


 * My goal, whether it be on the board or in my role trying to move the education group forward, is to see if we can harness this productive energy.


 * From: Charlie Schweik

Charlie Schweik is chair of the OSGEO education committee and an effective advocate for the use of open source geospatial software in academia. He is an Associate Professor with a joint appointment shared between the Department of Natural Resources Conservation and the Center for Public Policy and Administration at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is also the Associate Director of the National Center for Digital Government, and an affiliated researcher with the Science, Technology, and Society Initiative at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

His research focuses on environmental management and policy, public-sector information technology, and the intersection of those domains. His recent peer-reviewed publications focus on free and open source software and the social frameworks and institutions that drive their development and use. He is currently finishing up finishing up a book manuscript on collaboration in open source.

Charlie is regularly teaching an Introduction to Spatial Technologies course to undergraduate students using open source geospatial software. His course was offered using a distance learning approach and included participants from Nigeria, Uganda, Brazil, and the United States. Those materials are now available via the OSGeo Education web site. He is actively developing another course focused on remote sensing.

It was through Charlie's hard work and persistence that the content for these courses will be openly distributed with a creative commons license. Charlie's formal training and experience as a computer programmer with academic interests in studying the open source movement and promoting the use of open source geospatial tools makes him well qualified to be a charter member of OSGEO.

From: Ned Horning

Chris Schmidt
Christopher has led the development of OpenLayers, but more important to me he has also led the development of the community around OpenLayers. His efforts and time dedicated to the community are really impressive. So we have here a good example of someone who is a main developer and also takes the time to make sure the community around the project grows. And that is the cherry on top of the cake! Today as we all know OL is one of the most used GIS web clients around, if not the most used.

From: Duarte Carreira

Claude Philipona
Claude is a co-founder of Camptocamp, and is one of the founding members of OSGeo. He already contributes to some OSGeo project as the Conference Committee. Claude proposed to host FOSS4G 20006 conference in Lausanne and was strongly involved in the organization committee. Claude has been commited to Open Source and community principles since more than a decade. In mid-90's, he created a social and community website dedicated to mountaineering sports to openly share information between mountaineers (ski touring). By his experience, he knows open source and community problematic from different point of views and will be able contribute to OSGeo Board to give a fundamental vision for the next two years.

As a part time Professor at the School of Business and Engineering Vaud (HEIG-VD, Switzerland), he helps building bridges between academic world, the research organisms and commercial companies. He gives several lectures about or using Free and Open Source Software.

Claude holds a PhD degree in science from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL). His research in Near Field Scanning Microscopy was already strongly linked to mapping, but at the nano-meter scale.

From: Yves Jacolin

Helena Mitasova

 * The vision and objectives that I would like to pursue build upon my work in research, development and education and I will strive to:


 * promote broader use and development of OSGeo software stack and general open source principles in academia;
 * encourage and promote use of open source tools in geospatial research;
 * support development of new methods and applications by working with developers and pursuing relevant grants that can provide funding for students to develop more complex geospatial tools needed for scientific applications;
 * advance OSGeo participation at non-OSGeo conferences by linking with groups that organize open source sections at many large scientific meetings as well as smaller symposia
 * contribute to the development of educational infrastructure, especially at the university level, to create more favorable conditions for education of a new generation of OSGeo developers and users who will ensure sustainable growth of OSGeo in future


 * From: Helena Mitasova

Helena is member of several OSGeo committees and she is continuously active and visible in the OSGeo community.

Helena has been developing Open Source GIS since 1990 with even earlier efforts to lay out the mathematical foundations. She published a series of sophisticated algorithms in scientific publications and implemented them in the OSGeo software stack. This includes extremely valuable contributions to GRASS GIS and other projects.

She is mentoring students for many years, and is developing publicly accessible courseware for teaching Open Source GIS. Her activities in the education committee of OSGeo are fundamental to render OSGeo visible in academia and elsewhere. She also contributed a first public geodata set to the community, showing once more her engagement in various OSGeo activities.

From: Markus Neteler

I'd simply like to add that she has been a leader in the OSGeo education group throughout the years I have been involved with it. From my perspective, she has been actively trying to contribute and move the group forward and is a leader in the OSGeo educational domain.

From: Charlie Schweik

Jeroen Ticheler*
Jeroen has served as a director for the past two years and has helped move OSGeo forward in an appreciated and valuable way. In particular, he has helped lead some of the marketing developments that were really needed and gave critical feedback on board issues as they arose. He has served as a very helpful sounding board for ideas and direction and has helped bring good representation of the European environment, having worked for UN FAO in Italy and, more recently, starting his own consulting company in the Netherlands.

He is project lead for the GeoNetwork project and has helped build large scale applications of various parts of the OSGeo stack in large organisations. He is committed to OSGeo's mission and keen to continue participating in the future of OSGeo at the board level.

From: Tyler Mitchell

Geoff Zeiss

 * My background is technical. For 20 years I did or was responsible for software engineering at several companies. Last year I spoke at over 35 events and at most of these events I had an opportunity to talk about and evangelize OSGEO and open source geospatial.''


 * My key objective is to evangelize OSGEO worldwide, specifically into vertical sectors where there are opportunities for which open source geospatial is appropriate and where the benefits of open source geospatial have not been recognized to the extent that the traditional GIS or geospatial space has, where OSGEO and open source geospatial are already very well recognized.


 * From: Geoff Zeiss

Geoff doesn't need much of an introduction, being so active on the international conference speaking circuit. He has been a keen promoter of OSGeo from the beginning, in particular through spreading our message during his presentations but even more through helping building connections between OSGeo and others he knows.

Geoff has more than 15 years experience developing enterprise geospatial solutions for the utilities, communications, and public works industries. His particular interests include streamlining the infrastructure management workflow at utilities, telecommunications firms and local government, open source geospatial and Web 2.0 and its impact on infrastructure management, and converged BIM/CAD/GIS/3D solutions.

Geoff's work experience gives him a strong understanding of management teams and technical aspects of software development by being a chief technology visionary for several companies. His birds-eye view of the larger IT and geospatial landscape is very well informed and respected. His support and encouragement of OSGeo has already been very helpful in several ways, including helping raise sponsorship. As a board member he would bring considerable experience, enthusiasm and a strategic perspective that could help in the years to come.

From: Tyler Mitchell

I have pleasure to be able to know and work with Geoff for few years. He is a great promoter of OSGeo. When I was thinking of becoming involved in open source, he encouraged me and gave me great advices and now I am very glad he did so. As Tyler wrote, his wide view helps me very often to have better picture of our industry.

I strongly believe he is a right person for OSGeo Board of Directors.

From: Haris Kurtagic

Tim Schaub
Tim has been committed to open source geospatial software for many years, and is an active developer on a number of different javascript projects. His leadership in these project has been recognized: he currently serves as the Chair of the Project Steering Committee of OpenLayers, and is a founding PSC member of GeoExt (which aspires to be a full OSGeo project).

I believe he will be a great presence on the board, bringing the perspective of the javascript communities, and working tirelessly for the success of OSGeo. He is a great speaker and always represents OSGeo and its projects very well, and cares passionately about the communities of OSGeo.

From: Chris Holmes

Ned Horning

 * I have been a user, advocate, and supporter of open source geospatial software for more years than I care to remember. My impact may not have been all that great in the global scope of things but I have worked hard to raise awareness especially within the conservation community. I still have a lot of work to do. As a board member I would like to help OSGeo work more on expand funding opportunities for open source initiatives. One way to do this is to improve awareness within government and non-government organizations that fund projects that develop or use OSGeo products so they consider the benefits of OSGeo software and eduction/outreach resources when determining which projects they fund.


 * If elected to the board I will try to be an active member and will dedicate the necessary time to fulfill the duties that come with the position.


 * From: Ned Horning

Ned Horning has 25 years of experience working with remote sensing, GIS, and other geospatial technologies. His work history includes nine years at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and nine years working as an independent consultant. He is currently the Director of Applied Biodiversity Informatics at the American Museum of Natural History’s Center for Biodiversity and Conservation (CBC) where he has worked for over seven years. At the CBC he has focused his efforts on transferring technical knowledge to conservation practitioners around the world. Part of that work has been to encourage the use of open source geospatial and other software both at the Museum and also in their training efforts. Recently he has conducted such trainings in Vietnam and Lao P.D.R. He has also been an active member on the OSGeo educational committee and an avid supporter of OSGeo in general.

Mr. Horning is the lead author on the book, Remote Sensing for Conservation Biology being published by Oxford University Press. He is also the sole author of the “Remote Sensing” chapter for the Encyclopedia of Ecology (2007) and an editor of the Convention on Biological Diversity Technical Series Sourcebook on Remote Sensing and Biodiversity Indicators (2007).

From: Charlie Schweik