FOSS4G2008 Committee Issues

This page is our whiteboard. It lists jobs for FOSS4G 2008 that need help from volunteers as well ideas and comments.

LOC members and their main roles

• Gavin: Chair, PeopleSA liaison
• Carrin: GISSA liaison, governance.
• Daina: Programme
• Inge: Papers, presentations
• Dawn: sponsorship
• Ravi: government and SITA liaison
• Burnie: workshops and labs subcommittee coordinator
• Graeme: website, speakers
• Magda: exhibitors
• Russell: volunteers, man-on-the-ground in Cape Town
• Alize: Outreach and technical visit coordinator
• Jeff:??
• Paul: financial oversight, OSGeo-GISSA agreement
• Tyler: OSGeo liaison, governance, website

Roles looking for further commitment: contact database management; marketing; demo theatre

Workshops and labs subcommittee

• Burnie
• Dave Patton
• Jeff McKenna
• Graeme McFerren

Programme and papers subcommittee

• Inge
• Serena Coetzee (academic thread)
• Jeff

Other volunteers and their roles

• Tim Sutton: Code sprint
• Paul Scott: bulk mailing, web backup

Translation

We would reach a wider audience with parts of the website and announcements translated into major languages. Besides Africa and other developing areas, we specifically want to target China, India, Russia and other countries that have large FOSS interests yet limited involvement. If you can help please add your name and e-mail address here.

• User:Arnulf Christl translates to German and publishes in German language regions (where is the text to translate?)
• Hindi?
• Tamil?
• Mandarin?
• lots more!

Issues to resolve

OCS website management

Various configuration and improvements needed, including having multi-languages (as above) which may not be possible at present. Really we could use some PHP programming help to improve OCS so that it more perfectly suits our needs. Development is active on this project, but they are getting maxed out. As far as possible, OSGEO alterations to the OCS system should be fed back to that project(User:Tmitchell)

Specifics

• Modules to allow localisation of conference - e.g. travel arrangements, things to do and see
• Extensibility of the registration module to allow more details to be captured, such that delegates could be profiled a bit better, e.g. interests
• Extensibility of the registration module to allow bulk export of all (or subset) registrant details in a transparent format, e.g. csv or e-mail
• Extend the capability of the e-mail response module such that a conference manager can alter the details of information that gets sent in an e-mail, or add e-mail recipients
• Understanding about how automatic e-mails are triggered, and assurance that these all work
• Implement three-panel layout (with left sidebar)
• Implement multi-lingual plugins
• Float Drop bug in IE - essentially, main column of layout drops beneath the sidebar in IE - easily fixed in the CSS with a:
  • html #main { overflow-x: auto; overflow-y: hidden; width: 100%;} statement (User:gmcferren)
• For XHTML strict browsers such as Opera, there is a template bug in the Announcements functionality - a closing is missing in the template that generates the 'More Announcements...' html for the conference and year homepages. (actually it is /ocs-2.0.0-1/templates/schedConf/index.tpl between line 36 and 37 should be inserted a )
• Be aware that OCS liberally doses its html output with br/ tags when content is generated from text area fields - can leave unexpected results like tables that drop down the screen. Avoid the use of the Enter key, people...
• Implement seperate stylesheets for sub conferences(User:simon)
• Automatically redirect authors to the paper submission page once logged in(User:simon)
• Incorporate MapExchange map into site(User:simon)
• FOSS4G incorporates different tracks, (workshops, presentations, papers and so forth) - OCS should accomodate different timeline functionality for each track, like submission closing dates.(User:gmcferren)

I think that it would be useful to have some sort of direct read/select query only access to the SQL database behind OCS. We have run into so many "That may be in the next version" problems that would be mitigated by being able to download data from the DB direct. For example: all registrants with their contact details; a mail merge type query for generating name badges.(User:gmcferren)

Associated courses and workshops

If you know of any related courses or workshops being offered in southern Africa before or after FOSS4G2008 please list them here. The same goes if you or someone you know is willing to offer something specifically. This will allow delegates who can spend more time in SA to get more value from their visit and give them and excuse to travel to other parts of southern Africa!

• Graeme, how about ICT4EO offering a Sensor Web course in Pretoria (or KNP) after the conference?

Virtual market

If you can set something up online before the conference and manage it live during the conference we'd like to connect problems with solutions. I'd love the SA Government (National, Western Cape Province and Cape Town) to put out to tender their spatial requirements and have a bunch of local developers or entrepreneurs linking up with 'overseas experts' to offer solutions. Some business deals would be a great conference outcome. The existing OSGeo service provider directory (SPD) and jobs board could be enhanced to accomplish this. e.g. handle tenders or RFPs, not just job offers.