Talk:FOSS4G 2017 KidsMapGallery Committee

The OSGeo Kids' Map Gallery

We are bringing the Kids' Map Gallery to life to allow our children a chance to get involved in the really very cool work that we do. How many kids get to say that their parents take care of the water, or that they make the air clean, or that they make the streets safer, or that they help protect other children from disease and war? This is a blessing! And of course we want to share it. Those of us who are parents know that there are few things that are more fun than getting all map geeky with our kids.

We would like to inaugurate the Kids' Map Gallery at FOSS4G 2017 in Boston. We will be soliciting submissions of maps and artwork from children in the FOSS4G community. They will be displayed at the Conference centre for the duration of the event. Viewers will be able to leave messages for the children on cards that will be placed next to the paintings. Prizes will be awarded at the closing session, and so the children who will mostly not be attending the event will be able to watch the award ceremony and will get that card back with greetings from all the people at the very important conference their mom/dad was at who thought their picture was awesome. End result? They find maps unbelievably amazing, do all their homework, go to bed on time and grow up to be brilliant open source geographers, and yes, they save the world. That is the plan.

Task List for 2017

1. Write Content for FOSS4G 2017 Registration site
2. Write Content for FOSS4G 2017 Home Page
3. Get space at Conference Venue sufficient for a poster session, alternately and preferably wall space in the foyer or kiosk area.
4. Organize materials and hardware for display and for the comment cards
5. Assign a curator(s) to care for the pictures before, during and after the event
6. Get some small prizes, perhaps one for each age group. Also some sort of recognition (a pin or a certificate) for each submission
7. organise an announcement at opening session
8. organise an announcement and prizes at closing session
9. organise the return of the artwork to the artist

Questions and Considerations

1. Will submissions be accepted ahead of the event? If so, where do we store them?
2. How will the request for submissions be communicated to the children?
3. What is the plan if the gallery fails? If we get less than 10 submissions, I would say we should cancel the public part of the event and return the artwork to the children with prizes and a hand written cards from the curator on behalf of OSGeo. I think we can do that in a dignified manner that would still make the kids happy.
4. What happens to the paintings after the gallery? We should be sure that they can be returned via mail to the child if the parent doesn't pick them up at the event. Keeping them would lead to a perpetual storage and display conundrum.
5. I think that we should announce but not give out presents at the closing ceremony. The kids won't be in the room and if their Mom/Dad isn't there to pick up the prize it will be really bad for the kid watching the video.
6. I think there is no reason not to accept submissions from children outside the OSGeo community, but I do not expect to get them, since there will be no children's program at the conference, and I wouldn't make it a goal, at least not the first year.

Thoughts for the Future

We should consider the children who submit paintings to the Kids' Map Gallery as children who might be interested in a future OSGeo Kids' Club. We could start it out as a classic pen pal group. We come from all over the world. Why not take advantage of that and let our kids meet each other? A pen pal group would be low maintenance on our part and it could have some very nice results. It would be nice to hook this up with the education committee.