Spotlights

This document contains preliminary ideas on how to operate OSGeo spotlights, and is not yet operational/adopted.

Objective
Produce fairly regular "Spotlight" interviews for the OSGeo web site giving a deeper view about an OSGeo related developer, user, project or sponsor.

It is hoped the spotlights would:


 * Personalize the OSGeo community.
 * Give a sense of ways that different people are involved.
 * Give a sense of why people are involved.
 * Give a sense of why sponsors are involved.
 * Give brief introductory information on a variety of projects.

Developer / User Spotlight
This is the traditional sort of spotlight that was done shortly after OSGeo's formation. See the following for examples:

http://www.osgeo.org/content/spotlights/developer/index.html

Originally these were known as "Developer Spotlights", but they can be taken more broadly to be "Personal Spotlights". They should include a picture of the person, and give a sense of what they do, why they are involved, and a bit of other background. An existing question template exists (implicit in past responses at least) though it may be appropriate to update it.

Sponsor Spotlight
Sponsor spotlights are interviews with a person from a sponsoring organization discussing why the sponsor is involved in OSGeo. They serve two goals. One is to give the sponsor some profile within the community - to help folks understand who they are, what they do, and why they are involved. The other is to help other potential sponsors understand reasons for sponsoring better, in the words of other sponsors.

This is similar to (or perhaps could be repurposed from) the sponsor perspectives already in the journal - like: http://www.osgeo.org/files/journal/v2/en-us/final_pdfs/OSGeoJournal_vol2_LizTec.pdf and http://www.osgeo.org/files/journal/v2/en-us/final_pdfs/OSGeoJournal_vol2_1spatial.pdf.

Ideally, over time all sponsors should be spotlighted once, assuming they are willing.

Project Spotlight
This might be very similar to the Project Spotlights in the Journal, such as http://www.osgeo.org/files/journal/v2/en-us/final_pdfs/OSGeoJournal_vol2_MapWindow.pdf and http://www.osgeo.org/files/journal/v2/en-us/final_pdfs/OSGeoJournal_vol2_GeoNetwork.pdf.

The spotlights should, again, be a fairly standardized interview with a person involved in a project. It should help folks to understand:
 * the state of the project (mature, new, etc)
 * how it compares to other projects in focus
 * the role of the project - how it is used, etc.
 * some human interest info about the project developers, origins, etc.
 * pointers to additional resources.

The intention is that project spotlights could be produced for OSGeo projects and for non-OSGeo projects just trying to "get known" (aka OSGeo Labs sorts of projects). We will need to clearly differentiate between OSGeo projects, and non-OSGeo projects. Keep in mind we are providing user guidance as well as project promotion.

Templates
As has been done for the developer spotlights, a standard template of interview questions should likely be prepared for each kind of spotlight. A fair degree of flexibility should be allowed though.

Editors
Multiple spotlight editors (perhaps 2-4?) would be helpful to prepare the templates, select and solicit subjects, and publish the materials on the website.

Anyone interested in being a Spotlight editor should add themselves here.


 * Frank Warmerdam
 * Micha Silver

Tempo
I would suggest aiming for at least two spotlights per months. Perhaps one personal spotlight, and one sponsor or project spotlight.

Publish Where?
Spotlights should stay on the OSGeo "front page" for roughly a month. Spotlights should be archived (something like http://www.osgeo.org/content/spotlights/developer/index.html). We should also consider publishing applicable content in the Journal. Should we also report them via announce@lists.osgeo.org? I'd like to see them make it into places like SlashGeo.