Board Member Nominations 2016

The Board Member nomination (part of the Election 2016) will be open from 2016-09-05 to 2016-09-20 (two weeks). The list of nominees for the 2016 Board Member Election is maintained by the Chief Returning Officer (cro at osgeo.org). This page is write protected and can only be edited by SysOps.

The following nominations have been received for the OSGeo Board in 2016 through the Election 2016 process.

• The nomination period ends on 20 September 2016.
• This list is presented in the order nominations were received.
• Candidate statements and support by OSGeo participants or members, if they have been provided, are linked to immediately after the candidate name as a bulleted list.

Michael Smith

Nomination by Stephan Meißl

Hi there,

I'd like to nominate Michael Smith from the US as board member.

Mike works as Physical Scientist with the Remote Sensing GIS Center of Expertise at the Cold Regions Research Engineering Laboratory of the US Army Corps of Engineers. He has been a long time power user, supporter, and contributor of MapServer, GDAL/OGR, and other OSGeo projects. He is a member of the MapServer as well as the PDAL PSC. He is a FOSS4G regular and hasn't missed a single one since the 2003 MapServer Users Meeting as far as I know. Mike is the present OSGeo treasurer and has already served on the board for the last couple of years. I believe he is really doing a great job representing OSGeo and he is a perfect candidate to continue serving on the board. See his user page for more information

1. https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Michael_Smith

Endorsements and discussion

Nomination by Stephan Meißl. Support by:

• Daniel Morrisette
• Andrea Ross
• Jeffrey Johnson
• Marc Vloemans
• Doug Newcomb
• James Klassen

Angelos Tzotsos

Nomination by Jeff McKenna

It is my pleasure and honour to nominate Angelos Tzotsos for the OSGeo Board of Directors. As most of the community knows, Angelos is extremely dedicated, and passionately does whatever he can do help with all things OSGeo. It is hard to list all of his activities, but he is most known as the chair of the OSGeo-Live team, as well as being a project steering committee member for the pycsw and ZOO-Project communities; Angelos is very active in many other OSGeo communities[1]. He is a senior researcher at the National Technical University of Athens, but you can see his smile at FOSS4G events all around the world. Angelos is very easy going, approachable, and brings a get-things-done mentality; I feel strongly that he will do a great job representing the OSGeo community at the highest level. Please welcome Angelos to the Board of Directors.

1. https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Angelos_Tzotsos

Endorsements and discussion

Nomination by Jeff McKenna. Support by:

• Tom Kralidis
• Cameron Shorter
• Mark Vloemans
• Sebastiaan Couwenberg
• James Klassen
• Jeffrey Johnson
• Brian M Hamlin
• Paolo Corti
• Luigi Pirelli
• Simone Dalmaso

Maria Antonia Brovelli

Nomination by Helena Mitasova

I would like to nominate Professor Maria Brovelli for the board of directors. She is very well know in the community for her passion for open source software and open data, leader of numerous initiatives, including the latest outreach to United Nations, hosting FOSS4G Europe in 2015 and organizing several open source and open data sessions at the ISPRS congres in Prague in 2016. Her leadership and contributions to OSGeo were recognized by Sol Katz award in 2015 and she is on the advisory board and one of the regional directors of GeoForAll initiative. She advised many students who made significant contributions to several OSGeo projects including GRASS GIS and understands both the community building and the software development issues. I feel strongly that she will be able to take on the challenging tasks and often complex decision making that comes with the the board of directors membership given her experience as Vice Rector for the Como Campus of Politecnico di Milano. See her page for more information

1. https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Maria

Endorsements and discussion

Nomination by Helena Mitasova. Support by:

• Tanzeel Rehman
• Suchith Anand
• Luigi Pirelli
• Serena Coetzee
• Andrea Ross
• Siki Zoltan
• Jachym Cepicky
• Andrea Aime
• Marco Minghini
• Monia Molinari
• Peter Mooney
• Codrina Ilie
• Silvia Franceschi
• Daria Svidzinska
• Hayashi
• Andrea Antonello

Massimiliano Cannata

Nomination by Gérald Fenoy

Hello OSGeo community, I would like to nominate Massimiliano Cannata aka "Maxi" from Switzerland as board member.

Maxi is the leader of the geomatic division from the institute of Earth Sciences SUPSI. I had the pleasure of working with Maxi on the OSGeo board and greatly admire his dedication to the OSGeo community, logical approach and a keen knack of getting things done. He is deeply involved in OSGeo and FOSS4G at various level and is always willing to help and provide his relevant input on so many different topics, which sounds very important for a board member. He has proved his dedication to OSGeo during his term by being always constructive in the discussion and taking part of various committees, such as the United Nations committee for which he is now the co-chair. He is also involved in various projects at various level, the first which come to my mind is the istSOS project that he is leading with his team and his growing community, a workshop for istSOS is handled every year for at least 3 years during the FOSS4G. He is also involved in the ZOO-Project PSC since 2010 and was in the GRASS PSC from 2006 to 2016. His amazing knowledge about how things works in OSGeo or should work for the better, his dedication and his capability to work and discuss openly with different kind of people prove that he is a real asset for the OSGeo board.

His personal OSGeo wiki page can be found here [1]

Best regards,

1. https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Massimiliano_Cannata

Endorsements and discussion

Nomination by Gérald Fenoy. Support by

• Hayashi
• Dr. Sarawut Ninsawat
• Luigi Pirelli
• Andrea Antonello
• Silvia Franceschi
• Andrea Aime
• Marco Minghini

María Arias de Reyna

Nomination by Jeff McKenna

It is my pleasure and honour to nominate María Arias de Reyna[1] for the Board of Directors of OSGeo. María is well known in the OSGeo community for her relentless efforts for the GeoNetwork project, and her longtime contributions to the SIG Libre conference (the Spanish FOSS4G). Locally she is very active through the OSGeo microchapter network Geoinquietos, and more recently also through the Spanish national geomatics association, AESIG. She works for GeoCat providing SDI solutions all over the world. So you can see, María is a leader locally, nationally, and internationally. You can often find her live-tweeting[2] at every FOSS4G event, and sharing her passion for all things OSGeo. I see in her a very strong voice, full of youthful energy and passion, and a true leader that is absolutely ready for the global spotlight. Please welcome María to the Board of Directors of OSGeo.

1. https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Delawen
2. https://twitter.com/delawen/

Endorsements and discussion

Nomination by Jeff McKenna. Support by:

• Santiago Higuera
• Alejandro Díaz

Dirk Frigne

Two nominations were sent the same day.

Nomination by Moritz Lennert

I would like to nominate Dirk Frigne from Belgium as a board member.

Dirk has entered the Board recently and has since worked hard on advancing OSGeo interests and on pushing an agenda of professionalizing OSGeo as an organisation. He was one of the co-founders of OSGeo.be in Belgium and has been one of the leaders of the OSGeo-EU initiative which led to the creation of this new chapter and which hopefully will allow breaking the stronghold of proprietary software in EU institutions and allow the integration of more foss4g in European initiatives and programmes, by federating European actors into networks.

He has a strong business perspective and thus ensures a voice for all the small SME's active in foss4g.

I feel that he has only just begun and that at his current rate of pouring energy into OSGeo he will bring a lot to the community if he is allowed to continue in the board.

Nomination by Gert-Jan van der Weijden

I would like to nominate Dirk Frigne for the Board of Directors of the OSGeo.org foundation.

Dirk has already been in the Board since January this year, as a "substitute" after Jeff McKenna stepped down from the Board. Because of this "split-term" he is to be re-elected this year already.

Dirk is not just formally -being one of OSGeo's vice-presidents- visible, but also in discussions and actions both in the Board (as one can tell by the Board mailing list) as well as outside the Board.

As a founder and CEO of Geosparc (well know of GeoMajas), Dirk knows inside out what's going in doing business in an open source ecosystem.

Besides that, his efforts for putting open source for geospatial on the European agenda forces respect.

And on a local scale, Dirk is as members of the Board of Directors very much involved in the Belgian local chapter.

I think Dirk has proven in his first 8 month as a Board member that he is of great value of putting topics on the agenda that are very meaningful for a greater outreach of OSGeo.org as an organisation, and of Open Source for Geospatial in general.

Although I do not always agree on Dirk's opinions, I think this ability to raise the right questions, combined with his broad background and perspective continues to make Dirk a very valuable Board member.

1. https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Dirkf

Endorsements and discussion

Nominations by Moritz Lennert and Gert-Jan van der Weijden. Support by:

• Til Adams
• Johan Van de Wauw

Vasile Craciunescu

Nomination by Gérald Fenoy

please find bellow the nomination for Vasile for this year election of OSGeo Board of Director.

I would like to nominate Vasile Craciunescu for this year election. Vasile is a researcher at Romanian National Meteorological Administration, he is organizing conferences and workshops using the OSGeo technology and is a convinced and convincing FOSS4G promoter. He is very active in the Romanian community, he is one of the founder of the OSGeo romanian local chapter and always bring many members to the FOSS4G, to both local and international editions. Vasile was one of the pioneer, with Jachym, of the FoSS4G-Europe conferences after he had organized the second edition the FOSS4G-CEE in his country in Bucharest. He has taken responsibilities in many technical tasks for the board to accomplish his task and to facilitate the work of every board members. He has a good experience in working and leading research projects, he is the Romanian representative in Copernicus User Forum (the European Earth observation programme) and the representative of Meteo Romania at OGC.

Vasile has proven his dedication to OSGeo over the year and, by competing again, he is proving, one more time, his dedication to the foundation.

Vasile is a community leader and as such should be part of the Board of Director.

All the best,

1. https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Vasile_Craciunescu

Endorsements and discussion

Nomination by Gérald Fenoy. Support by:

• Iván Sánchez
• Dirk Frigne
• Patrick Hogan
• Andrea Ross
• Codrina Ilie
• Andrea Antonello
• Silvia Franceschi
• Andrea Aime
• Marco Minghini

Jeffrey Johnson

Nomination by Tim Sutton

I would like to nominate Jeffrey Johnson for a position on the OSGEO board. Jeffrey is an extremely energetic and active proponent of FOSSGIS. Among other things, Jeff is co-founder of the US QGIS User's Group and co-maintainer of the GeoNode project. His friendly enthusiastic approach and desire to marry business interests with his passion of FOSS GIS will be a great asset for OSGEO. I believe that as an OSGEO board member, Jeff will exert a positive influence on how the OSGEO project is managed and perceived by members of the public at large.

I have made contact with Jeffrey prior to sending this email and he is happy to accept my nomination.

Regards

1. https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Ortelius

Endorsements and discussion

Nomination by Tim Sutton. Support by:

• Tom Kralidis
• Jody Garnett
• Andrea Ross
• Paolo Corti
• Bart van den Eijnden
• David William Bitner
• Til Adams

Nicolas Bozon

Nomination by Markus Neteler

Dear OSGeo community,

It is my pleasure to nominate Nicolas Bozon (nicolas.bozon at gmail.com) for the OSGeo Board of Directors 2016 elections.

Nicolas is an avid OSGeo advocate from France, with a global approach of open source and open collaboration. He's been using and promoting FOSS4G technologies since 2006; he is a Charter Member since 2011 and a Marketing Committee member since 2012.

He co-founded the ZOO-Project, the Open WPS platform, and is part of its PSC and contributors since 2009. He is also a regular attendee of global and regional FOSS4G events since 2008, for which he is often helping on organization and marketing.

Nicolas is a geospatial expert and designer, with complementary research, development and business experiences. He is also maintaining a vast network of users, developers and researchers within OSGeo and also beyond in a broader geospatial community.

Active at project, chapter, conference and committee levels, Nicolas is strongly committed to open source and has inspiring vision for the Foundation. He also has a deep understanding of the evolution of OSGeo into a global volunteer organization and a clear roadmap to further strengthen our Foundation.

Nicolas has a keen interest in geospatial innovation which he manages to also leverage for community related issues. His deep insight into media design, branding and marketing will greatly help OSGeo to grow as a top class volunteer geospatial organization.

Given his wealth of experience, his international profile and excellent communication skills, I believe Nicolas would be a great addition to the OSGeo board.

Best regards,

1. https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Nbozon

Endorsements and discussion

Nomination by Markus Neteler. Support by:

• Sittichai Choosumrong
• Codrina Maria Ilie
• Maria Brovelli
• Marco Minghini
• Hayashi

Marc Vloemans

Nomination by Gert-Jan van der Weijden

I would like to nominate Marc Vloemans for the Board of Directors of the OSGeo.org foundation.

I know Marc now for approximately 10 years. The first years simply as fellow-Dutchmen working in spatial IT in The Netherlands. But since Marc joined the Board of Directors of the Dutch Local Chapter "OSgeo.nl" in 2015, and since we both were members of the Local Organizing Committee of FOSS4G in Bonn this year, I have worked with Marc more closely than ever before.

I guess a lot of you (the participants of FOSS4G) can't have missed Marc since he was the central person in manning the OSGeo.org booth at FOSS4G.

He has a broad management experience in "spreading the open source word" in both commercial and public organizations, not just in Europe but also in other continents. But his organizational experience is not tied to just our well-known FOSS4G ecosystem.

Therefore I think Marc can build bridges to other organisations and ecosystems, and thus bring OSgeo.org a step further in its maturity.

And besides that, I know Marc as someone you can have a good beer/talk & laugh with!

1. https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Marc_Vloemans

Endorsements and discussion

Nomination by Gert-Jan van der Weijden. Support by:

• Jeffrey Johnson
• Andrea Ross
• Bart van den Eijnden
• Til Adams
• Jeroen Ticheler