Open Geoscience Committee

Background

The idea for the committee was conceived during a EGU-themed birds of a feather meeting at the FOSS4G-Europe in Como, Italy on July 16 2015

Motivation

There is currently no established interface between the OSGeo communities and geoscience organisations like the American Geoscience Union (AGU) or the European Geoscience Union (EGU). At the same time OSgeo members publish their scientific work, which is based on FOSS and open data, within such organisations, often without being aware of each other. Further, students and young scientists who are using FOSS as a base for their work need information on how to share this work and reap the recognition within Acemdia which they deserve.

Within geoscience, the new role model of "Open Science" or "Science 2.0" is emerging. Many desiderata for future "open scientists", including publication of both the data and software, active international networking and reach out to industry and society are already common practice within OSGeo. Therefore OSGeo can provide guidance by best practices on how these practices can be established within Academia.

Goals

• Launch the discussion how to address "Open Geoscience" among all stakeholders within OSGeo.

• Development of best practices within and beyond OSGeo.

• Establish communication with scientific communities such as EGU and AGU.

Communication

• through the OpenGeoscience mailing list (subscribe)

Activities

• Planning of activities for EGU 2016 [August 2015 - tbd]
• tbd

Next steps

• update this page / outline of committee
• [ACHIEVED] create mailing list (ticket)
• [ACHIEVED] draft email request to send to the OSGeo Board to create a new committee (preferably before next Board meeting on 13 August)
• Schedule a telco regarding EGU 2016 planning

Meetings

2015-09-02

Conference Call (via Slack: #opengeoscience channel). Time: 19:00 hours CEST. Background info on new EGU Sessions for the 2016 GA

Minutes OpengeoScience Committee Meeting

Participants:

Jeff McKenna Raffaele Albano Massimiliano Cannata Peter Löwe (scribe)

Channel: #opengeoscience channel on Slack

Topics:

1. 1: Potential new sessions for the EGU GA 2016
2. 2: Short courses @ EGU 2016
3. 3: Promoting the new OSGeo Opengeoscience Committee

1. 1:

So far, FOSS-themend sessions have been conducted at EGU GA for the last three years. These sessions are open to "everything FOSS" and are pretty much show and tell. They are based in Earth and Space Science Informatics (ESSI) and the Hydrology division. The ESSI Sessions are non-topical and allow for contributions from all other EGU Divisions The number of presentations in these sessions continues steadily to grow (orals + posters). For now the already established sessions are to be continued. For the last two years there were also evening events kindly funded by OSGeo, to establish a OSGeo "bridgehead" @ EGU. Invited speakers are only feasible for Townhalls (and Splinters), not a regular session.

The EGU deadline for new session proposals is Sept 18: Opportunity to launch a distinctly OSgeo-flavored session within ESSI

Overview currently submitted/pitched sessions: http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/egu2016/provisionalprogramme

There are already suggestions for OpenScience-themed session (not sure what they aim at), but there's nothing which clearly says "OSGeo"

Proposal: A new dedicated session focusing on the high level / strategic cross-community angle (not so much research results) to submit a couple of speech about OSGeo vision of Open geoscience on the different fields: software, data, and publication. To promoting our vision and group and to start the discussion and engagement of people.

Needed: 1) a unique angle and 2) a catchy title so we attract submissions from other OSGeo-people attending EGU.

Massimiliano offers to take the lead for the OSGeo software state-of-the art paper.

Peter offers to write about the significance of OSGeo fpr scientific infrastructure.

Raffaele also considers submitting a topic.

Ideas for session title: "(OpenOSGeoScience) Connecting the OSGeo geospatial software communities and EGU ", "Aplications and challenges in Open Geoscience"; "Solutions and challenges of Open Geoscinence" ; "Connecting the OSGeo geospatial software communities and EGU"

Working title for the Townhall: "OSGeo meets EGU: Building an Open Geoscience Community" (consensus to have a Townhall in 2016)

Option: Go for a PICO session. Option: Coorganize the session with NH, Hydro, GI, Planetology, etc

Status: We're still debating the exact title of a new session, we want to do another townhall (for which we have a working title) AND there are plans for a Shourt Course, which is not on a critical deadline.

1. 2:

Not affected by Sept 18 deadline Raffaele is asked to send information about this option (also) to the GeoForAll mailing list.

Raffaele also proposes to pitch this during the ECS (Early career scientist representative committee of EGU ) meeting of the next month

1. 3: promoting the new OSGeo Opengeoscience Committee

- Peter volunteers to dissiminate the "hello world"-message which was sent to GeoForAll, etc. to the EGU persons which left their e-mails during the previous OSGeo-Townhalls.

- Massimiliano have sent out some private e-mails to engage people august was not the best period to find people around

- Jeff updates the osgeo.org pages (osgeo.org pages and even main wiki page links to make)

Raffaele promote it among young scientists (- >plans to have a email lists)

Next conf call: Wednesday, 12:00 hours CEST

[Upcoming] === 2015-9-9: 12:00 hours CEST @ SLACK===

Members

• Margherita Di Leo, Founding Member
• Jeff McKenna, Founding Member, OSGeo President
• Peter Löwe, Founding Member [Chair]
• Massimiiano Cannata, Founding Member [Co-Chair]
• Phillip Davis, Member Geo For All Education Committee
• Maria Brovelli, GeoForAll Europa Chair

Pictures

Holding the 1st "charter" of the committee. On that paper was written: "Open Geoscience Committee: an entry for Open Source geoscience topics."

Founding meeting 01

Founding meeting 02