Election 2017 Candidate Manifestos

A space for the candidates for election to the Board to share some information about themselves, their aspirations for OSGeo, what they would like to change, improve or introduce and what role they would like to play on the board.

A space for the candidates for election to the Board to share some information about themselves, their aspirations for OSGeo, what they would like to change, improve or introduce and what role they would like to play on the board.

Vicky Vergara
https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Cvvergara

About me
I am a person that sets goals and does what is possible to achieve them. I also tend to modify those goals depending on the situation.

I am an Economist by accident, a Computer Scientist by choice, with the heart of a teacher.

I arrived to OSGeo because I wanted to go to Japan and I wanted to do something that could combine the Economics and Computer Science, I had in mind a Geo-Economic Information System.

There was an opportunity to study GIS in Japan, but as things turned out, I was not blessed with the scholarship, so could not go to Japan to learn GIS. I removed the goal of going to Japan and added the goal of learning GIS by myself.

I used many of the OSGeo projects like QGIS, MapServer and PostGIS, I also compared Mexico's INGEI data with OSM data. Four months later I had a map to work with, so, the goal of learning GIS was “completed” (you never stop learning).

With my data and map ready, the first idea that came to my mind was to make a route from my house to my dad's house, that is when I arrived to pgRouting. There were some issues because of the INEGI data, and I had to modify code so that I could route from my house to my dad's house.

Because of these modifications, I offered myself as translator as a way to thank pgRouting developers for being open.

That is when I started talking with the pgRouting developers, Steve Woodbrige & Daniel Kastl, and I was invited to include the modifications I made into the 2.0 release of pgRouting (September 2013). So my life as open source developer started.

The following year, 2014, Steve invited me to participate on an open project “Trash collection for Montevideo” and while we developed, he mentored me about the benefits of being open and taught me how to work as a team on an open source project.

On 2015, I was invited again to fix bugs for pgRouting, and on our discussions, it was decided that a full rewrite was to be done, so I became the full time pgRouting main developer.(removed from the goal stack the idea for the Geo-Economic Information System) This same year I was blessed to be nominated and accepted as a charter member of OSGeo. Since this year, I have been a mentor on the OSGeo-GSoC program.

Because of pgRouting being on the rewrite process, I started visiting #osgeolive IRC room, to make sure that pgRouting could be installed, I didn’t want the rewrite to break the installation on OSGeo-Live.

I must mention that on 2015 I also achieved the long discarded goal of going to Japan, when I went to FOSS4G Tokyo on 2015. (you never know when the change of goal finally make you reach the original goal)

This year, on May 2017, on one of the visits to osgelive IRC, there was a PSC meeting and I was invited to stay. The OSGeo-Live project members were always glad to help me, so when I was asked to help as communications liaison I accepted with pleasure. Started to "do" besides communications liaison, made some modifications to the documentation, fixes, debugging, and eventually (like 42 days later), on June, I was invited to become PSC of OSGeo-Live.

I consider myself the luckiest person in the open source world, I do 24/7 open source, thanks to Daniel Kastl and Georepulic.

My vision

 * OSGeo Foundation is here to serve the Flora of the world.
 * OSGeo Foundation is here to serve the Fauna of the world.
 * OSGeo Foundation is here to serve the Climate of the world.
 * OSGeo Foundation is here to serve the People of the world.
 * OSGeo Foundation is here to serve the Countries of the world.
 * All OSGeo community members are PSC (Propose, Suggest and Comment)

What you have done within the community in the past

 * pgRouting contributor on version 2.0
 * pgRouting main developer since version 2.1
 * Contributor and PSC of OSGeo-Live since version 11.0
 * Very proud OSGeo-GSoC mentor of:
 * Sarthak Agarwal
 * Andrea Nardelli
 * Rohith Reddy
 * Maogang Wang
 * Vidhan Jain

What your interests are in terms of the board

 * In general: promote the use and development of Free and Open Source Software
 * In particular: promote the use and development of the OSGeo projects, OSGeo incubation and OSGeo community Free Open Source Software.

Any things that you would like to change or introduce
Get to know the kitten

Given my location and maternal language, the following points have a stronger implied emphasis to Latin America, but its not limited to this area.


 * Encourage developers to build open projects using OSGeo projects that can help communities from pot hole control to emergency plans, from planting trees to avoid forest deprivation, from Archeology to Economics, etc.
 * Promote the use of open source as tools, in particular OSGeo projects that give an ample variety of backend and frontend tools for systems development.
 * Promote the participation of Latin American students/developers/users to participate from simple tasks as translation up to code contributions on OSGeo Projects
 * Promote the participation of Latin American students/developers/users to create new OSGeo Community projects that can be used by local communities.
 * I went to the OGP summit in Mexico 2015 https://www.opengovpartnership.org/ and I think there is a lot of possibilities for using OSGeo projects. Do more research, and maybe starting to see how my own country is advancing towards the openness and more details on how OSGeo can be/its being  used.
 * Support and ancourage smaller open source projects to join OSGeo, and make OSGeo more valuable for them
 * Reach out to Latin-American local chapters and encourage them to play an active role in OSGeo

Curiosity killed the cat

Normally people tend to see, what's going wrong, on things that are happening. What becomes difficult to observe is what is going wrong on things that even hasn't started yet.

Lets not forget to think about why things are not happening.


 * Why "[abc] is NOT [xyz] OSGeo".
 * Why do some projects, for example pgRouting, do not start incubation?
 * Why is there no local OSGeo chapter in, for example, Mexico?
 * Why do we have mostly sponsors from North America and Europe?
 * Why there are so few participation from Latin American countries in OSGeo even if they have conferences every year ... same for Japan actually.
 * Why we only hear (and see) those, who raise their voice and shout out loud. But we miss to reach the silent majority?
 * What causes the "inactivity"?
 * Why ....

What role you would wish to fulfil on the board (if any)

 * As an Economist, I don't want to handle money (remember it was by accident).
 * Get things done! Solving issues and making decision.
 * Ask: why? what? how?

About me
https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Delawen

 I am a FLOSS activist focused on the spanish speaking geo-world. I am a Woman in Tech (WIT) activist. I work with spatial metadata and GeoNetwork.

I intend to make OSGeo as diverse, inclusive and free (as in free puppies) as possible. I want OSGeo to continue being transparent, comfortable and useful to promote FLOSS in the geo world. I would like to press on public administrations so they promote open data and software.

I work for GeoCat, which you *should* remember from sponsoring many geo-events. I work with metadata. Ever heard of GeoNetwork, the data catalog? Well, that's part of my work. I am also part of the geoinquietos (georestless) group, which is one of the most active group in the spanish speaking geo-world. We are a very unorganized welcoming group spread all around the spanish speaking countries that tries to make geothings fun. Unconferences, mapping parties, geobeers, workshops,... Anything we can enjoy while sharing our knowledge and help people around us.

Some people say I'm very straight forward when talking. I can't help it. I don't like dancing around an idea losing time while the elephant sits on the center of the room eating all the peanuts. So this I can assure you: I will openly fight for what I think is better, even if it means making me look unpolite or the "bad cop". I'm used to get my hands dirty, I don't care.

To me, transparency is key. You will never hear me saying opposite things in private and in public. I will not say things in public I understand they shouldn't be made public. But you will never hear me defend something in private and another thing in public. I can change my mind, of course, and that happens more often than what I am willing to admit :) But I will not be a hypocrit and I usually have no problem in sharing my knowledge or perspective on something. I don't like being manipulative. I don't like lies. I don't think the end justifies the means. I always try to be as transparent as possible.

My vision
Let's focus on OSGeo and how I see it. As we heard many times on the FOSS4G: This is about people. People collaborating to make a better world. I see OSGeo as an organization built on top of regional chapters which are built on top of local "chapters" which are built by people. So my idea of OSGeo is like a pyramid, where local "layers" work together to get the same goal at the top. "Think globally, act locally". And that's how I think it should work. Split and spread the work into very small pieces so we all can contribute to a greater good. I think this is how we should always work.

What you have done within the community in the past
As a developer and contributor, I have collaborated with some of the OSGeo projects. Right now I mostly focus on GeoNetwork, but it is not the only software and/or community I have contributed to (with translations, bug report, testing, patches, answering mailing lists, etc...).

As an activist, I was one of the founders of the local group in Sevilla and have tried to maintain it alive with talks, workshops, mapping parties and events of all sort. Right now I am trying to get the FOSS4G 2019 to Sevilla. Also, I was elected several years ago as board member on the Spanish Chapter, although it is true that we haven't done many things in the name of that chapter. Handling a language speaking chapter that covers the whole world is complicated, maybe that's why we split into the GeoInquietos group.

I helped (or was very annoying until we did it) in the creation of the European chapter of OSGeo. I hope to promote FLOSS through it, specially FLOSS in the geo-world.

I have contributed with many talks and workshops on OSGeo events for several years, even getting this year some keynotes, one of them on the main FOSS4G.

Does OSM count as community? I am not as active there, but also have contributed organizing mapping parties and mapping.

What your interests are in terms of the board
I think it is important to promote small events all around the world. Specially if they focus on target groups we are not very close to. I would like to see more diversity in OSGeo membership, we are all very "standard". As we diversify our base, we will get better ideas and visions on the top. On my utopic OSGeo vision, there will be a group of local geoactivists everywhere, all of them making the world better while having fun. Contributing with small pieces to the complex puzzle.

Smaller events also lead to easier reach to people who usually don't come to our bigger events, increasing diversity.

Also let's not forget that in the end, public administrations play an important role on the promotion of FLOSS. I am confident we can explain to them why they should work more in the open and collaborate with us. It is a win-win situation. And this can only be achieved if we are a strong organization with clear objectives. We have to show them how much can be done when we all work together on a transparent free way.

Any things that you would like to change or introduce
I am quite happy with how things are evolving in OSGeo, I have to say. But still, there are things that could be improved.

Sometimes I hear about funding for small events like codesprints. Sometimes I hear communities saying they don't have funds for small events. How is this possible? Somehow communication gets lost. This is something to improve: communication. Also, usually all this funding ends up with the same people (or is it another lack of communication here?). I would like to spread that area of action and focus where OSGeo is weaker.

Another thing I am worried is the "open" definition. I think we should get closer to the free (as in freedom) world and make sure we don't deviate much. Of course, not everything can be free, some things have to be just open. But the open-washing [1] we all have seen in the last decades in all tech areas is a dangerous movement that may end up closing OSGeo in the mid-term and losing everything we have achieved.

And last but not least, diversity is something that worries me a lot. Even if you think that having a uniformed community cannot harm much, even if you think there is no injustice there and if there is no diversity it is because diverse people are not interested in the OSGeo world, there are a lot of errors and bugs related to that[2]. Quality comes also from diversity.

[1] Small but concise definition: http://openwashing.org/

[2] Anecdotic but clear example: https://twitter.com/nke_ise/status/897756900753891328

What role you would wish to fulfil on the board (if any)
I know I have some privilege-blindness here as I am a highly educated "white" binary-gendered female-born living in an european country. But still, as president of a WIT association that is already improving diversity in my region, I think I can push OSGeo a bit forward and help introducing more diversity until I crash into my ceiling glass of privilege-blindness. I would like to go back to the free/open discussion, as making sure our contributions are reusable and useful should be one of the core goals of OSGeo. If we become too lax on the open definition, we may end up promoting closed software that only helps the owner of the source code, not the community.
 * Promoting diversity (geographical, ethnical, cultural and gender)
 * Promoting FLOSS

Candidate
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