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 osgeolive 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 Georepublic.

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 Archaeology 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 encourage 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 wrong that things/activities that should be going are not even 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?

María Arias de Reyna Domínguez

About me

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

<TL;DR> 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.</TL;DR>

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)

• Promoting diversity (geographical, ethnical, cultural and gender)

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.

• Promoting FLOSS

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.

Jody Garnett

About me

G'Day! Jody Garnett here!

About me: I have been working with our open source projects in a professional capacity since 2003. First with Refractions Research (Victoria, Canada), then LISAsoft (Sydney, Australia) and now Boundless (everywhere! it is boundless).

About you: As a charter member you have demonstrated commitment to our organization, our open approach, and have been recognized by your peers! Special congratulations to all our new charter members!

I am seeking re-election; for comparison please consider 2015 Manifesto; and recent director update.

My vision

Open is the best way to Geo :)

I absolutely love seeing the lessons we have learned in open source software being applied across the geospatial field.

What you have done within the community in the past

As a current board member, I am seeking re-election. In this capacity I have:

• Taken part in the reboot of our sponsorship program with Jeff McKenna. I have served as the primary point of contact, backed by Michael Smith as treasurer for 1.5 years. This cumulated in the board "sponsors and partners breakfast" at foss4g this year, organized with Maria, where we had a chance to listen to others in the geospatial field.
• Joined the marketing committee to help with the website/reboot, after it became clear that many of the foundation objectives were being held back by our website presence.
• Worked with the incubation committee to introduce "OSGeo community" projects to allow our foundation to support innovation.
• Contributed to updating our ten year vision, mission and goals - which was a great opportunity to wrestle with a consistent vision for the future of our foundation
• Helped start the OSGeo Travel grant program, with the aim of raising diversity levels at both our foss4g event, and our global events.

Ongoing commitments:

• Member of the GeoServer Project Steering Committee, with several accomplishments including seeing the project through OSGeo incubation starting in 2009.
• Member of the GeoTools Project Management Committee, with several accomplishments including porting the docs from the wiki and seeing the project through OSGeo incubation.
• Chair of the Incubation committee, with several accomplishments including updating our graduation checklist and introducing community projects

Community activities and responsibilities:

• Organizing committee of FOSS4G 2007, FOSS4G 2009 and a regional foss4g-au event
• Active member of local meetups including GeoRabble and Victoria GeoGeeks
• One of the founding participants in LocationTech, volunteering as chair of the top-level "technology project" with a responsibility for incubating and supporting projects.
• Currently serving as a committee representative on the LocationTech Steering Committee. I have managed this relationship with due care, relying on Michael and Norman as our official line of communication.
• Active speaker, championing the values of our community

What your interests are in terms of the board

My interest in seeking re-election is two fold:

• I feel I am making a positive contribution to our community in the role of a director, and wish to continue to serve in this capacity if reelected
• There are a number of outstanding activities and challenges I would be able to see through to completion

My primary interest in the board is to facilitate the workings of our organization:

• To clearly address questions and decisions brought to the board in a timely fashion
• Double check our organization is firing on all cylinders - using our goals as a guide to ensure we are not missing anything
  • provide resources for foundation projects - we need to ensure we are offering a full-service foundation experience for our projects with infrastructure, budget, and promotion as required. I like the balance we have here, not holding projects from using their own hosting, and only stepping up as requested by the project teams.
  • foster the use of open source geospatial software - as one of the central tenets of "Empower everyone with open source geospatial," this activity is worked on by everyone. I think we will need to keep in mind that while OSGeo is here to support the members, it is also an opportunity for the members to help others who have not yet heard about open source.
  • encourage interoperability with open and community standards - this is an area where we as an organization can do more work. The board can seek to better use our relationship with the OGC, but as always real activity and resources need to be applied at the project level.
  • encourage a high degree of quality and innovation in foundation projects - many of our projects have greatly benefited by going through incubation, using it as an opportunity to work on the quality assurance and governance procedures asked of OSGeo projects. For innovation we will need to explore the possibilities open up by the "OSGeo community" project category and actively recruite projects into the OSGeo family. This is a tricky balance as we want to both grow our portfolio, while not softening our principles or estranging existing projects.
  • champion the use of open-source and community participation through the development of an open education curriculum - GeoForAll is actively working in this area and it is a pleasure to see the success this initiative is enjoying
  • enable communication and cooperation amongst OSGeo communities - we have a number of initiatives that are great at building bridges across our communities, projects like OSGeo live and GeoForAll gather together participation from across our organization.
  • champion community building through horizontal (local chapters) engagement - I would love to see the local chapter model used more world wide, because it is a powerful tool for advocacy. It would help if we can better showcase the work that is already being done - both in terms of recognition and as an example to inspire.
  • champion community building through vertical (sector specific) agreements with like-minded organizations - we have been making real progress here in recognizing partners, signing agreements with new partners, and renewing our relationship with sponsors
  • be a welcoming and inclusive worldwide organization at all levels - as noted we have more to do with respect to diversity, I think we can also work on growing our base of contributors and volunteers
  • celebrate excellence, openness and service within the OSGeo community - I would like to see the board and committees work more on recognizing individual contributors in our community, the board for its part may be able to introduce additional recognition beyond the sol-katz award.

We also have a number of outstanding challenges to meet:

• I feel that the board is not meeting its responsibilities with respect to maintaining a relationship with our OSGeo projects. Once a project is graduated each project has a representative (a vice-president of our organization listed on the officers page), which reports directly to the board. We have an independent review of our projects highlighting shortfalls against the standards set during incubation. This remains an outstanding commitment for the board, and the respective project officers, to meet.
• We have an open question on if insurance is required for directors (yes) and officers (yes?) including all those named as chairs (maybe?) and project officers (maybe?). This is an important financial and risk consideration that remains an unmet responsibility of the board.
• We ran into a governance/fairness issue with the conference committee in 2016, resulting in the chair at the time stepping down. The board chose to act indirectly by asking all committees to write down their governance and decision making process. Following up with the committees represents an unmet responsibility.

It is wonderful to see our many successes as an organization, the OSGeo board has a vital role to play as our community grows and prospers.

Any things that you would like to change or introduce

For the foundation:

• Increased transparency, communication and respect - I think it is the key to working together.
• Continue to build up our committees, local chapters and initiatives with enthusiasm, budget and trust. It has been great to see a change in this area with a few guiding lights like GeoForAll shining the way.
• Do a better job of celebrating our community members; with increased recognition, visibility and a more diverse range of awards (highlighting innovation, leadership, outreach and those new to our community).
• We have a lot of work to do with respect to diversity, while we have one active idea with the global travel grant program the most important thing I intend to do is listen.

Specifically for the board:

• Increased transparency, communication and respect - I think it is the key to working together.
• Accountability, we have had a number of decisions made without adequate follow through. I think this is an area where the board cannot only improve, but offer an example of our expectations as an organization.
• Continue to build out our partner relationships, and do a better job of attending the partner events we are invited to.

Wish:

I really valued the board f2f meeting where the vision and goals of the foundation were refreshed. It was often my first chance to listen to many viewpoints in our organization that had not been making sense to me. I wish more of our members could have this experience, especially the opportunity to listen and work together.

• Replace the board f2f meeting with an "OSGeo Leadership Sprint" gathering together our board and officers, for a chance to listen, plan and work together

The phrasing of this question places a lot of emphasis on gaps in our organization and change. I am impressed with the direction the foundation is going and glad to see so much opportunity for us to shine.

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

Since I am putting myself forward for reelection I now understand between there is the role I wish to fill on the board (supporting our open source projects and community) and the opportunities that are presented for our foundation, and its directors, to act on.

• I would like to work with a strong team of directors that share responsibility for decisions taken

While there are a few set responsibilities (president to sign documents, secretary and treasurer) I do not think roles are appropriate for a director, we depend on directors for careful/responsible decision making.

Astrid Emde

About me

• https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Astrid_Emde

I work with the OSGeo stack since many years now as consultant. Always curious to learn more and open for new technologies. My focus is on web mapping and PostgreSQL/PostGIS.

I love to use OSGeo software and build up projects with this stack and I also love to teach others how to use it. I involved in Mapbender and have collaborated with some of the OSGeo projects like MapServer, GeoServer, QGIS and PostGIS.

My vision

• focus on solutions
• support local chapters, projects & FOSS4G
• I like the idea "Think globally, act locally". Support local communitys with their work and make them visible at OSGeo
• try to see topics from different perspectives and support open but positive discussions
• networking - bring people together. Support events where people can come together. Encourage people to get involved.

What you have done within the community in the past

I am involved in OSGeo since 2016 and visited my first FOSS4G in 2006 in Lausanne with my collegues of CCGIS and gave a presentation about Fiona and Mapbender. It was a great event where I felt the spirit of the community and wanted to get more involved.

I am an activist of OSGeo since many years and a Charter Member since 2010.

I am a regular contributor at global and regional FOSS4G conferences or other events like FOSSGIS [1], AGIT [2], PGConf.DE, INTERGEO [3], FrOSCon [4], FOSDEM. I gave presentations and workshops on Mapbender, MapServer, QGIS, GeoServer, PostgreSQL/PostGIS, PostNAS (Import of german cadastre data via ogr2ogr), OSGeo-Live and OSGeo. It is a pleasure for me to introduce people to our great projects, get them involved and build up connections.

FOSSGIS e.V

I am also active in the FOSSGIS e.V. [5] which is the German language OSGeo Local Chapter. FOSSGIS represents the OSGeo and OpenStreetMap community which is great.

At FOSSGIS I organize community events and code sprints [6] and try to bring people together. I am also responsible for the twitter account and the webside news items.

FOSSGIS e.V organizes the annual FOSSGIS conference [1] with more than 300 participant. I was involved in the organizantion from the beginning twelve years ago.

In 2016 we had FOSS4G in Bonn where I was also involved and was pleased to organize the FOSS4G code sprint [7].

TIB Videos Archive

I was involved in the contact and workflow of publishing the videos from different conferences (FOSSGIS, FOSS4G) in the TIV AV portal [8]

Marketing

I love booths, postcards, flyer and especially sticker as a great possibility of spreading our idea. That is why I try to organize material and an OSGeo booth at every event that I am involved in.

I am involved in OSGeo marketing since a long time. I helped translating and printing the old OSGeo flyer.

I also organized the translation and printing of the new OSGeo flyer to german and new OSGeo sticker. We used them at the last INTERGEO in Berlin in September 2017.

I am still active in the Marketing committee and help with the new webside and branding - but more in the background.

OSGeo-Live

I am involved in OSGeo-Live since many years. I added Mapbender to OSGeo-Live in 2011 and am in charge for the project since then. I am member of the OSGeo-Live PSC. I am involved in the press releases, work on the german translation and motivate others to help with the translation. For many years I organized the printing of hundreds of DVDs and later USB dives of OSGeo-Live for FOSSGIS and INTERGEO.

Twitter

I take care of some twitter accounts like @osgeo, @osgeo-live, @fossgis_ev, @fossgis_konf, @qgis_de, @mapbender and try to keep you informed.

News items

I am backup on the OSGeo News editors team and support Jorge Sanz if needed.

Mapbender

I am part of the Mapbender [9] team and a member of the PSC. I do trainings on Mapbender very often and set up solutions with Mapbender and the OSGeo stack during my work at WhereGroup Bonn. WhereGroup has a training academy called FOSS-Academy where I give several courses and spread the spirit of OSGeo & FOSSGIS.

[1] FOSSGIS Konferenz 2017 Passau https://www.fossgis.de/node/294 [2] AGIT OSGeo Park & Day https://www.fossgis.de/node/261 [3] INTERGEO OSGeo Park 2017 https://www.fossgis.de/node/303 [4] FrOSCon 2017 https://www.fossgis.de/wiki/FrOSCon_2017#Impressionen [5] FOSSGIS e.V. http://fossgis.de [6] FOSSGIS Hacking https://www.fossgis.de/node/299 [7] FOSS4G Code Sprint 2016 Bonn https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G_2016_Code_Sprint [8] TIB AV Videoarchive https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/TIB [9] Mapbender http://mapbender.org

What your interests are in terms of the board

• improve the visibility of the projects and local chapters
• discuss how OSGeo can get more visible f.e. at universities, events. Support student programms, travel grants, GSoC
• spend OSGeo money for OSGeo projects & events
• discuss the role and visibility of the sponsors
• marketing / spreading idea / make OSGeo visible at FOSS4G events
• get things done and documented and structured

Any things that you would like to change or introduce

• not yet. I am open for discussions

Helena Mitasova

About me

I am a Professor at the Center for Geospatial Analytics and Department of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA, and lead the Geoforall Lab at NCSU (one of the founding labs)

My vision

Make the world a better place with open source geospatial

What you have done within the community in the past

For the past see here Election_2015_Candidate_Manifestos#Helena_Mitasova Since elected to the board I served as a vice-president, taking responsibility for working with geoforall initiative and managing partnerships through memoranda of understanding. For geoforall, see my presentation from FOSS4G 2017: State of Geoforall 2017 I also work with my students contributing new methods, techniques and tools to GRASS GIS and developing and delivering workshops and courses - see our publications and our courses

What your interests are in terms of the board

I would like to continue my previous work with geofroall and our MoU partners and contribute to successful delivery of the website for the community to take over. I would also like to build bridges between academia and industry, both in terms of education and research and development to help open source geospatial grow new generation of passionate developers, users and community builders.

Any things that you would like to change or introduce

Although I believe we made a progress I would like to continue to encourage educational institutions not only to use FOSS4G but also increase the contributions back on several levels - from educational material to the code.

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

Coordination with geo4all initiative, working with partner organizations, connect academia and industry

Sanghee Shin

About me

I'm a founder and president of Gaia3D, Inc., a geospatial software company in Korea, which was founded in 2000. And I'm a chair of KAOS-G(Korea Alliance of Open Source Geospatial), a legal company association of open source geospatial companies in Korea. I'm also an activist to promote open source spirit in Korea and around Asia. I like traveling and try to find the meaning of life.

My vision

I'd like to contribute to hand over better and bright world to the next generation with my experiences and knowledge, that might be mainly from geospatial. I believe many problems we're currently facing can't be solved by one person, one discipline, or one country's efforts. Only collaboration or 'work together' could sort out these problems and I concluded 'Openness' lie at the core of this collaboration.

Recalling last 2 years as a board

Recalling last 2 years as a board, it was great honor for me to have served as a board at OSGeo. However I also confess that it was not so pleasant experience as I expected. And it required much time than I initially thought. There were many endless debates and discussions all over the lists and I sometimes felt helpless being stuck in the endless maze having realized that Director’s role is setting Directions and sometimes time can fix the things. At first please take a look at my manifestos from 2015 election https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Election_2015_Candidate_Manifestos#Sanghee_Shin and my recent updates on my roles https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Face_to_Face_Meeting_Paris_2017#2._Director_Update here for my roles for the last 2 years. Over the last 2 years I tried to bring in different views to OSGeo horizontally from Asia, vertically from business domains. Also I tried to put some efforts to increase the relationship with UN. I’m not sure whether the results out of my activities are satisfactory or not. I should admit that there were not so many chances to represent Asia’s view at the board level. It’s unclear if it is caused by Asia’s low activities or cultural/language barriers. However I’m very happy to see many vibrant local activities in Asia region over the last couple of years. As a businessman I tried to be more tolerant and permissive toward issues around OSGeo. Sometimes I saw the ‘Desire to the Innocence’ from the community. I’m confident we can grow more with more diverse views and impurities. This is far from the hostile takeover. Regarding the UN activities, I’m pleased to have played small set of role in developing a relationship with UN. As a result of FOSS4G 2015 Seoul’s UN special session, UN Open GIS Initiative officially started at the March of last year and I was designated as Chair of TAG(Technical Advisory Group of UN Open GIS Initiative) at the November of 2016. UN Open GIS Initiative is going well and hope UN could complete their plan soon with full operation of their system based on open source.

What you have done within the community in the past

I established OSGeo Korean Chapter in 2008 and have served as representative till to the last September. I've been organizing annual FOSS4G Korea conference from 2011. I've been involved in numerous translation projects including QGIS Manual, QGIS Training Manual, GeoServer Manual and others. Also I co-organised several Open Source GIS Training with other Korean Chapter members. I was elected as a Charter Member of OSGeo Foundation in 2011. I have enjoyed many outreach activities for the promotion of open source GIS & OSGeo. Many of my talks can be found here: http://www.slideshare.net/endofcap/presentations. I organised International FOSS4G Seoul 2015 as chairperson in Seoul, Korea from 14th to 19th September 2015. I have played a role in UN Open GIS Initiative as a chair of TAG(Technical Advisory Group). Recently I've led the formation of KAOS-G(Korea Alliance of Open Source GeoSpatial) as a legal entity. KAOS-G is a legal association of commercial open source GIS companies in Korea for the promotion of open source GIS.

What your interests are in terms of the board

I believe too much devotions and affections to OSGeo will harm both me and OSGeo. I'll limit my contribution time to OSGeo and keep distances from the Foundation as much as I love OSGeo. By doing this I think I can have the 3rd person’s view toward the OSGeo. Anyway my first priority will be representing Asia’s voice, that’s the reason why many of my Asian friends asked me to run for the re-election. And as a non-developers and a businessman, I’d also like to bring in users/practitioners/business mind to the board level. As our foundation grow, we need to hear and reflect voices from members other than developers. Tangibly to say I would like to see 2 things in the next 2 years. First I’d like to see the successful completion of UN Open GIS Initiative, which is at Spiral 1 and 2 stage now. Second, I will encourage Asian people to actively jump in Foundation’s activity without shyness.

Any things that you would like to change or introduce

Many core parts of OSGeo project is being developed during the spare time of contributors. This could harm the sustainability of open source ecosystem and our foundation. One of my interest is how to make virtuous cycle within our ecosystem at least in our foundation, from developers to users/practitioners/businessman. Now we see that many companies and institutions get the profits/benefits using OSGeo projects. I believe some parts of those profits/benefits should be returned to real developers in some way. I have no concrete idea how to make this virtuous cycle work. But, I can share my experience here in Korea. Recently my company and other 11 Korean open source companies formed KAOS-G(Korea Alliance of Open Source Geospatial) as a legal entity. Unlike OSGeo, KAOS-G is a company alliance to capture the value by offering professional open source GIS to customers and return the profits, contribute back to the communities. It’s just start and experience however I expect some of good idea I can get from this KAOS-G activities.

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

I know it's beyond the power of OSGeo's board. However I'd like to stop the escalating tension in Korean peninsula and bring back the peace, if I have the power. May the peace be with you and all of us! How could geospatial technology bring back the peace to us? Any idea?

Dirk Frigne

About me

I am Dirk and I am (still) a human being. I see the society today still to much as several silo's of people working in parallel with each other, but I see also great initiatives of collaboration and people worjing with each other.

I see groups of people thinking from their perspective, as 'the government', 'the academic', 'the business people', ... but I believe we should move to the DNA of the tripple Helix[1].

I believe that OSGeo is a great laboratorium for modern society to learn how we can behave as a community and take responsibility for a future based on respect and collaboration. There is although still a long way to go ...

Background: I am an Electrical Engineer from the University of Ghent - Belgium [2]. Since more than 30 year Software Engineer in different roles. Founder and spiritual father of the OSGeo project Geomajas. Father of 3 daughters and happy married for more than 30 years. Founder of a couple of technology companies. OSGeo advocate since 2017. I did projects for governmental agencies, worked with several universities and worked together with a lot of other companies to accomplish our goals.

[1] http://www.triplehelixconference.org/th/9/the-triple-helix-concept.html

[2] http://www.ugent.be/

My vision

From a community of open source communities, OSGeo is now transforming into a professional organisation of volunteers that takes responsibility in society trough partnership agreements with like minded organisations. As an organisation of individuals together we can act and play our role in the Civil Society to work on a more collaborative world. Creating strong partnerships with liked minded organisations is a strong way to defend the (geo-) open source rights towards not yet convinced friends, and to help already convinced friends to act in an open and inclusive way towards a more open world.

OSGeo is all about volunteers and people who want to give the best of themselves to collaborate where they think they can make a difference. It is the responsibility of the board to listen to these volunteers, and create the right environment so they can respectfully do their thing.

I also believe that OSGeo as a global organisation creates an enormous leverage by acting on the local level. It is the challenge of the board to listen to these local chapters and make them act as one whole on the global level.

What you have done within the community in the past

• OSGeo member since 2007 and became a charter member in 2013.
• member of the steering committee of geomajas and a regular speaker on FOSS4G conferences since 2007.Some of them are uploaded here [3] and [4].
• try to keep contact with several Local Chapters.
• co-founder of OSGeo Belgium [5]
• co-founder of OSGeo Europe [6]
• co-organiser FOSS4G.BE 2015, 2016 and 2017
• co-organiser FOSS4G Europe 2017
• helping in creating OSGeo Live project for INSPIRE (see topic talks in FOSS4G Europe 2017, INSPIRE Conference and more)

But most important: having fun and becoming passionate with the things I do ...
and
Getting more and more respect for all of you, being part of and contributing to OSGeo.

[3] http://www.slideshare.net/DirkFrigne/presentations

[4] http://ftp5.gwdg.de/pub/misc/openstreetmap/FOSS4G-2016/foss4g-2016-1566-keynote_ii_-_osgeo_think_global_-_act_local-hd.webm

[5] https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Belgium

[6] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Europe

What your interests are in terms of the board

When I was asked if I would step up when being nominated, only 2 candidates where nominated for 5 positions.
As of today, there are 8 other strong candidates for only 5 positions. I agree with the vision and direction the current board of OSGeo is bringing us. Continuity in the board is important. So my interest in terms of the board are represented today.

I want to support the idea of Jody:

• Replace the board f2f meeting with an "OSGeo Leadership Sprint" gathering together our board and officers, for a chance to listen, plan and work together
  

This is a great way to leverage the voluntarism of a lot the current charter members and turn it into "OSGeo-board energy"

I have an engagement already (after organising for the FOSS4G.BE 2017 within 2 weeks) to work further on the implmentation of the OSGeo European chapter. The idea I had to be a board member was that this experience of working on a region local level such as Europe could be of interest to the board, but I don't need to be a director to share this experience.
And of course I want to work further on strong partnerships with like minded organisations, and bring people together to collaborate, from the different parts of the triple helix structure: universities, governmental administrations and the industry.

Any things that you would like to change or introduce

As a director or not, I will try to bring people more together. Respect is an important feature for a great community, and I think we should help remember ourselves to keep that in mind, being sometimes hard for other volunteers...

Jeff McKenna

<libravatar>jmckenna@gatewaygeomatics.com</Libravatar>

About me

Hey friends and family! To say it is an honour to be nominated to again help represent the whole OSGeo community, is kind of an understatement for me. I’ve been working hard within the community for so long, lately helping with the little things for the foundation, that when Nick and others reached out to me asking for me to help the organization at the leadership level for 2017, there was only one answer for me, yes! :) Thank you to all that have reached out to me in support recently, so many from all over the world, your support means so much to me.

I think who I am has a lot to do with my parents, and I give them credit for giving me the opportunity to grow and then shine. I am a product of a working-class family; my father was born and raised on a farm, and as I am the first-born, he taught me to get to know what hard work is. My mother was the lead nurse in the Emergency hospital ward for 46 years, and she taught me true compassion for people, for everyone, no matter who they are – this ‘caring’ of people really stuck in me from my mother.

I would go on in life to become many things, which I was for many years so embarrassed by, but later I would become proud of them: 1) many years in university as a Civil Engineer (too young, from age 17, just wrong timing), 2) registered nurse (you have to step into someone’s shoes sometimes to really understand them), 3) initial attack forest fire fighting (making it to the elite 4-person heli-tack team in Canada was a proud moment, and again taught me hard work ethic and to help people and the environment, literally at the sound of an alarm bell and having to run to a helicopter within 3 minutes, to help some remote area anywhere in Canada, with no questions asked – got to experience remote areas of Northern Canada where few people get to see, and meet & become friends with so many good people, that are unfortunately underrepresented – this taught me to help stand up for those underrepresented, and help them shine), 4) hard manual labour directly on an automotive line making Honda Civics (during my summers as a student), really gave me early interactions with a successful Asian company, in a production line the size of 3 football fields long, teaching me the importance of quality assurance, & teamwork, and how important even the smallest of tasks is, for the end product, 5) professional ice hockey (playing in the United States, where I learned to respect the effort required to be a professional athlete, and that even playing a ‘game’ takes a lot of non-glorious tasks all year long), someone recently reminded me that I was a team captain at every level I played (college, university, etc.) and 6) finally back to my love of the world, and innovation, to find my calling in a new program (at the time the first ever 4 year degree program in North America in GIS), then called “Geographic Information Processing”, for my thesis I focused on “freeware” and Open Source. Somehow the Open Source community was an absolute natural fit me for, where teamwork, caring, doing the little things, hard work, and getting to know friends from all over the world, became my true calling. With OSGeo and the community, I had found my true home.

I hope this helps people understand me, why I care, about people and communities from all over the world, why I literally hop on a plane with little notice to go help an OSGeo community grow, and share the OSGeo passion.

My vision

My vision has always been to help all communities, to give the quiet new person sitting at the back of the huge room the spotlight in OSGeo, to help that community grow, and then shine. I have also tried to make OSGeo feel like a family, where the family stretches all over the world. I have tried to make local leaders more visible, promoting their local events to the world stage. Really my vision for OSGeo is, and has always been, to share, to laugh, to make friends, and to have fun.

What you have done within the community in the past

Much of my focus is around FOSS4G, in the past and currently. I have tried to bring the event, as any size big or small, to all areas of the world. Early on I created a process and a document (still used today in some form) to help make sure that FOSS4G moves around the world, to all parts, with the goal of planting a seed in the local community. More recently I focus on smaller FOSS4G events, just doing the little things to help those communities grow, for events such as FOSS4G-Asia in 2018 in Sri Lanka, or discussions of new events such as FOSS4G-MENA (Middle East and North Africa), or FOSS4G-Kuwait (initial discussions happening now). At FOSS4G-Boston there was talk of another FOSS4G-Australia, in 2018, and I am excited to throw my hat in for that too. At the recent FOSS4G-Paris I happily committed to help the FOSS4G local event in Ireland as well, in 2018.

Speaking of FOSS4G-Paris, it was there and also at FOSS4G-Boston where I met face-to-face with LocationTech leaders Marc Vloemans and Thea Aldrich; great discussions, and I would do anything to do that again with them. Maybe Marc is more known in OSGeo circles, but Thea is also a true leader, and I hope everyone reading gets a chance to meet Thea and talk with her and experience her passion for Open. Thea: you could be getting a keynote invite from me, for a future FOSS4G event ;)

For a very long time now I have focused on local chapters, helping create a new chapter, maybe just little things like helping setup a new mailing list, copy/pasting a new chapter page, and giving them the tools and passion they need to shine. I also, and many can attest to this I bet, follow and comment on most local chapter mailing lists, even if discussions are happening in other languages. For 10 years now I have been using translating tools (Bablefish, GoogleTranslate, whatever) to follow discussions and comment, which helps local communities feel part of the whole foundation. It’s just what I do, every single day, for OSGeo.

More recently in the past few years I have helped as a co-CRO for elections. Again, just doing the little things that are needed in this community, and helping new members shine. The joy and honour I see from new Charter members, when they learn of nominations, is so special to me, and really it’s why I do this – to give them that joy, and make them feel special and part of OSGeo, part of something special.

Even more recent I have tried to help with Google Summer of Code, and now the Google Code-in. I just really think that these are the future leaders of our industry, and if I can do a few things to help them experience OSGeo, that is a good thing. This experience has helped me too, as I’ve watched OSGeo leaders and do-ers Madi and Helli in action, up close, and I’ve actually learned a lot from both of them.

I should probably mention the MapServer project, where I try to help too – funny, a few weeks ago someone said to me in person at an event “I saw you do a release, the night before you flew in for your talk”, I said “yes of course, this is what I do” with a smile ha. For the OSGeo community.

What your interests are in terms of the board

During my past years on the Board I focused on helping new initiatives grow, often by documenting MoU’s (wiki editing, nothing glorious), documenting new OSGeo projects (again nothing glorious, just wiki edits and website edits), and in general working with these new teams and welcoming them into OSGeo. I am proud to be part of important meetings with other community leaders in the early stages of GeoForAll, for the critical initial meetings for the OSGeo-UN relationship, and countless others. I take those meetings very seriously, and did everything I can to make sure I was there in person. I know the importance of these meetings and MoUs, even if they seem more for visual than for outcomes, at the time – the outcomes come years later, making those initial meetings very important. In my next Board term, I would again like to focus on those relationships.

Any things that you would like to change or introduce

I would like to introduce leveraging our ~390 Charter members more often at the Board level. This means: I actually want to install LimeSurvey (the Open survey software we use for elections) on an OSGeo server, create voting.osgeo.org domain, and then regularly ask the Charter members for input on foundation decisions. We haven’t really leveraged the strength of our Charter members, other than for elections. I feel that our Charter members should have more say in the decisions of our foundation. As I already mentioned above, we really need to focus on sharing OSGeo to new focus areas, such as the Middle East, and have more representation from areas all over including South America, Russia, etc. I would like to see Board members in the next few years from those areas that I mentioned, playing a big part in the future of OSGeo.

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

I would like to help with the leadership of OSGeo, in any capacity. Many years ago I mentioned what I called an “Executive Board” for OSGeo (a president, and a VP) so that the executive board can all help with important high-level tasks – I think it is superb that the recent OSGeo Board has setup this, with 2 VPs. This will really help spread tasks around at the highest level. (to be honest, I only mentioned “Executive Board” for OSGeo because many years ago I was a VP of a local non-profit organization with what they called an “Executive Board”, and that’s why I knew it worked) I look forward to working in the OSGeo Board with that structure in place, it really helps. Thanks current OSGeo Board!

Why OSGeo?

I’m adding this question, because I think it is an important question to ask, whether you are new to OSGeo, a founding Charter member, new to the Board, or possibly entering another term at the Board level. To me OSGeo is a foundation that is truly Open. We share, our software, our passion, our code, our fun, our laughter, our struggles, our challenges, and we grow into one big strong family. Our community is special, we are vibrant, we hold events that are fun, where people are approachable, where learning and sharing is most important, where no judging or criticisms exist, where people can be themselves, as themselves, and be part of the OSGeo community, just like that, for life. I am proud to be a part of this community, and proud to dedicate time for the OSGeo foundation. Thank you for reading, and, I hope to see you in person soon, where I can share my big laugh and big smile with you.

Fate: on the exact day that this voting decision is announced, I’ll be right where I am supposed to be: with OSGeo friends and family, keynoting a core FOSS4G event, FOSS4G-State of the Map-Argentina.

Please take the time to read and know each 2017 Board nominee. Your vote as a Charter member is important and valued.

-- Jeff http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Jeff_McKenna

Venkatesh Raghavan

About me

Work as Professor of Geoinformatics at the Graduate School for Creative Cities, Osaka City University, Japan. You can find more about me here

My vision

• Consolidating the free & open geospatial ecosystem through Industry-Academia-Government synergy.
• OSGeo as community-driven engine to bring about positive social change.

What you have done within the community in the past

Came up with FOSS4G acronym in 2004 to denote Free and Open Source Software for Geoinformatics and have been promoting FOSS4G ever since. As a co-founder of OSGeo, served on our first Board. Currently serve as the OSGeo President, board member of OSGeo.JP and active role in several OSGeo Local Chapters especially in the Asian region.

Since the inception of OSGeo, I have used every opportunity that I could get to promote our activities by delivering talks, organizing conferences/workshops, helping in establishment of local chapters, writing research papers/training documentation, localizing OSGeo tools, software packaging, mentoring/advising SME’s to start-up business using FOSS4G tools etc.

My recent talks at FOSS4G-Europe 2017 [1] and FOSS4G-Korea 2017 [2] and some documents on SlideShare [3] should provide some more information about my past contributions and future perspectives.

• FOSS4G-Korea 2017 Talk
• FOSS4G-Europe 2017 Talk
• some other recent talks

My write-up for the 2015 Board election is at [[1]] Since January, 2016, I have tried my best to fulfill all responsibilities that are expected of an OSGeo President. I have also been active the Conference Committee and ZOO-Project PSC. I have represented OSGeo at various events and also helped in organizing local, regional, and international events.

On the academic side, I have brought out conference proceedings, special issue of peer reviewed journals and also supported the activities of GeoforAll as a member of the Advisory Board and regional co-chair for Asia.

What your interests are in terms of the board

I would like to continue my previous activities for promoting OSGeo and expand our presence in geographical regions and application areas where we are still under represented.

Any things that you would like to change or introduce

• Increase avenues for interactions with charter members and enhance their participation in decision making.
• Find ways to strike a better balance the expectations of users and developers (of OSGeo Software), perhaps by organizing some user focused sessions at FOSS4G events.
• I realize during my tenure at the board, that the tasks consume more time and effort that I had expected. I think we need some paid secretarial services to handle routine tasks so that the boards decision becomes speedier and smoother.

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

Wish to fulfill any role assigned to me by the board and our community to the best of my ability. Based on my past experience and some understanding of how our community works, I think my main role would be that of a “general-purpose” promoter for our foundation. I also to provide input on governance issues from an Asian perspective and bring in a multi-cultural viewpoint to our decision making process.

OSGeo will be a teenager in February, 2018. I hope that out teenage will be as enjoyable and memorable as our childhood years have been. As a board member, I would like to keep a watchful eye to ensure that we don't end up growing up a bit too fast and miss the fun of being a teenager.