Board Member Nominations 2011

The following nominations have been received for the OSGeo Board in 2011 through the Election 2011 process. The end of Sunday, August 7th 2011 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.

Peter Batty

I nominate Peter Batty for a position on the OSGeo Board. I've worked closely with Peter in a variety of situations - his focus and experience would serve OSGeo well as a director. As Chair of the FOSS4G 2011 event he has shown a willingness to stick his neck out for FOSS4G and OSGeo - taking on the challenge of balancing the demands of the community at large and running a large event. He is well connected but has his feet on the ground, with many ideas for how to get things done, e.g. raising sponsorship, next steps for growth, etc. I've appreciated the insights he's shared at open source speaking tracks that I've been part of, he presents OSGeo very well. He's no stranger to the boardroom table and I hope we can put that experience to work for OSGeo.

More from Peter's bio page or his blog: http://geothought.blogspot.com/

I have worked in the geospatial industry for 25 years. I am currently a co-founder and VP of geospatial technology at Ubisense, where I am leading the development of a product called Ubisense myWorld, which is focused on simple to use mapping for utilities and telcos, and makes use of several open source geospatial products including PostGIS, MapFish and OpenLayers. Previously I have been CTO of two of the top three (closed source) geospatial software companies (and two of the world's top 200 software companies) Intergraph, and Smallworld (now part of GE). I am chair of the FOSS4G 2011 conference in Denver.

I have contributed to several industry open data standards including the Open Geospatial Consortium in its formative years, and IEC TC57 Working Group 14 (for exchange of electric utility data). I am an active participant in and advocate for OpenStreetMap. I was a member of the Board of GITA (the Geospatial Information and Technology Association) for 5 years, from 2004 through 2008, and am again in 2011. I have been a member of the GeoWorld magazine Editorial Advisory Board since 1996, have published many articles and spoken at many conferences around the world, and write a blog called geothought.

I'm an active advocate for open source geospatial software. I speak regularly about open source at conferences. I have helped organize local events for FRUGOS, the Front Range Users of Geospatial Open Source, in Colorado. I was an organizer of the WhereCamp5280 event in Denver in 2009 and 2010.

From: Tyler Mitchell

Charlie Schweik

I nominate Charlie Schweik for a position on the OSGeo Board. 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. With his colleague Robert English, he has just completed a 5-year National Science Foundation funded study on open source collaboration resulting in a book manuscript entitled “Successful Internet Collaboration: A Study of Open Source Software Commons” (forthcoming, June 2012, MIT Press). One chapter in this book analyzes OSGeo as a case study (thanks to interviews with OSGeo members a few years ago). Charlie has regularly taught an Introduction to Spatial Technologies course to undergraduate students using OSGeo-related technologies. He also just completed teaching a course to high school teachers using QGIS.

It was through Charlie's hard work and persistence that OSGeo first created a web-based educational content inventory system. He is now trying to work with other OSGeo affiliated academics (especially Suchith Anand at the University of Nottingham) to build a network of OSGeo-affiliated academic institutions and move OSGeo education toward a new derivative work system. He is particularly interested in focusing some of this effort on how local governments might move toward or become interested in open source geospatial technologies and believes it is critical for OSGeo to promote affiliated projects more in the government space.

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 board member of OSGEO.

From: Ned Horning

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