Sol Katz Award 2005Nomination

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SUBJECT: Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software - Call for Nominations

The organizing committee for the upcoming Open Source Geospatial '05 conference would like to open nominations for the inaugural Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software.

The Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software (GFOSS) will be given to individuals who have demonstrated leadership in the GFOSS community. Recipients of the award will have contributed significantly through their activities to advance open source ideals in the geospatial realm.

Sol Katz was an early pioneer of GFOSS and left behind a large body of work in the form of applications, format specifications, and utilities while at the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. This early GFOSS archive provided both source code and applications freely available to the community. Sol was also a frequent contributor to many geospatial list servers, providing much guidance to the geospatial community at large.

Sol unfortunately passed away in 1999 from Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, but his legacy lives on in the open source world. Those interested in making a donation to the American Cancer Society, as per Sol's family's request, can do so at https://www.cancer.org/asp/donate/don_multi_donate.asp?navToScreen=don_1.

Nominations for the Sol Katz Award should be sent to sol.katz.award@gmail.com with a brief description of the reasons for this nomination. Please place "Sol Katz Award" inthe subject of the email. Nominations will be accepted until Saturday April 30th @midnight. A recipient will be decided from the nomination list by a selection committee.

The winner of the Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software will be announced at the Open Source Geospatial conference in June. The hope is that the award will both acknowledge the work of community members, and pay tribute to one of its founders, for years to come.

-- Organizing Committee Open Source Geospatial '05 http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/mum/mtg2005.html