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 osgelive 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 Georepulic.

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 Archeology 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 ancourage 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 going wrong on things that even hasn't 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 reelection, 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:

• Took 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, aimed to help diversity 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 to meet that I feel embarrassed to leave to the next board

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 tenants of "Empower everyone with open source geospatial" this activity is worked on by everyone. I think we will need to keep in mind that OSGeo 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 needs 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, 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 it 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.

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

Candidate

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