FOSS4G 2009 Press Release 18

To be sent to prospective abstract authors.

FOSS4G Abstract voting explained

Sydney, Australia. 24 June 2009.

A number of people from the OSGeo community have questioned whether the FOSS4G abstract selection could be unfairly biased or rigged through the community voting process. In particular, there were concerns with our last "tongue in cheek" communication suggesting authors encourage their friends to vote for their presentations. In retrospect, the message should have focused on inviting people to review all presentations and promoting FOSS4G.

However, to ally concerns about bias, we feel it is important to be transparent about the abstract selection process (for the general track), which will be as follows:

1. Call for abstracts, including promotion in a number of areas.
2. Abstract submission deadline.
3. Chase abstracts from a few presenters who had indicated they wanted to present but forgot to submit an abstract.
4. Ask the community to rank abstracts.
5. Abstract selection committee to review community rankings. Some minor adjustments may be made to:
   1. Ensure there is a suitable selection of presentations for each of the specific FOSS4G user groups: Techies, Government & Private CIOs, Academic, Regional delegates. It is expected that most voters will fall into the techie user group, while half the delegates will likely fit into the Regional and/or CIO group.
   2. Any obvious rigging should be avoided.
   3. Endeavor to avoid having duplicates of the same presentation, and possibly encourage presenters with similar topics to combine their presentations or change the slant of their presentation. We want to encourage a depth of presentations.
   4. Focus on the conference theme of "User Driven".

Information on how the academic papers will be assessed and selected can be found here: http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G_2009_Call4papers

The Open Source community has a reputation for honesty, trust and good will, which we expect will be prevalent throughout the FOSS4G conference. While we will be vigilant, we don't expect to see much blatant rigging of the voting system from the community.

Upcoming FOSS4G milestones

• 15-28 June 2009, Abstract Voting is Open
• 31 Jul 2009, Early registration deadline
• 14 Sep 2009, Completed program available
• 20 Oct 2009, FOSS4G Workshop
• 21-23 Oct 2009, FOSS4G Presentations and Tutorials
• 24 Oct 2009, FOSS4G Code Sprint

Media Sponsors

• Position Magazine: http://www.positionmag.com.au/
• Asian Surveying and Mapping Newsletter: http://www.asmmag.com
• Geoconnexions Magazine: http://www.geoconnexion.com/
• Directions Magazine: http://directionsmag.com/
• GIS Development: http://gisdevelopment.net/
• Baliz Media: http://www.BALIZ-MEDIA.com/

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For more information or to keep informed from the FOSS4G Organising Committee, join our announcement list or twitter feed at: http://2009.foss4g.org/contacts/

or contact:

Cameron Shorter, Chair of the FOSS4G Organising Committee and Geospatial Systems Architect at LISAsoft

tel +61-2-8570-5050

c a m e r o n . s h o r t e r @ l i s a s o f t . c o m [[Cate<math><math>Insert formula here</math><math>Insert formula here</math></math>gory:FOSS4G]]