Election 2018 Candidate Manifestos

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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.

Steven Feldman

My OSGeo Member Profile

About me

I'm passionate about tech, geography, everything open and communities. I have worked in commercial and leadership roles in geo for over 20 years and for the last 10 years have been active in open data and open source. I am an advisor, mentor and investor in tech businesses (usually with a location focus) and a volunteer.

You might want to look at my blog where I have been writing about geo and open for over a decade: KnowWhere Consulting

I also recently started a site to share fun images of Maps in the Wild called Mappery

My vision

I want to ensure that there is a long term sustainable future for OSGeo to support and grow the use of Open Source geo.

What you have done within the community in the past

I first became involved in OSGeo in 2012 when I was invited to chair FOSS4G in Nottingham by the UK chapter. Since then I have been elected as a Charter Member, a former chair and now active member of the Conference Committee, vice chair of FOSS4G UK and Treasurer of the OSGeo:UK chapter.

I have helped to update the process for selecting the LOC to run FOSS4G global and I helped initiate and lead 2 Travel Grant Programmes (2017 & 2018). I'm an enthusiastic and at times noisy advocate for OSGeo.

What your interests are in terms of the board

I would like to play a role in the development of a medium term strategic direction for OSGeo that identifies our vision, objectives and most importantly the actions that we need to take.

Any things that you would like to change or introduce

  • As part of a strategic review I would like to consider whether our current governance structures are the ones that we need for the future. Put simply, if we were starting OSGeo today would we structure it the way it is? (I don't have a preconceived view on this but I do think it is worth consulting and considering this topic)
  • We have a lot of charter members and list members but often we struggle to get active volunteers when non-code tasks need undertaking. I would like to explore how we can increase the pool of contributors and activists.

What role you would wish to fulfil on the board (if any)

I believe that I could bring my commercial experience to the board in both strategic planning and by acting as the lead to strengthen OSGeo's relationship with its corporate members and sponsors (extending the initiatives already underway)

Tom Kralidis

About me

I've been involved in FOSS4G efforts since the 1990s. Starting as a user with no open source or development experience, I was drawn to the principles of FOSS and the rest (as they say) is history. I develop, use and advocate for FOSS4G/OSGeo tools both in a volunteer capacity as well as my role at the Meteorological Service of Canada as a Senior Geospatial Architect.

Best of luck to all candidates. It is an honour and a privilege to be nominated for the Board. Thank you!

My vision

For Geospatial Open Source to always be a strong viable option for implementation by anyone, anywhere. This is realized by a balanced, interoperable, sustainable and healthy OSGeo.

What you have done within the community in the past

  • OSGeo member since inception
  • long term dedicated effort on user, development and advocacy of FOSS4G / OSGeo in support of interoperability
  • Charter member since 2007
  • user training and workshops
  • Incubation Committee
  • Project mentor for OSGeo incubation of PyWPS (graduated 2018)
  • PSC memberships: MapServer, pycsw, PyWPS
  • core committer: QGIS, GeoNode, PyWPS, OWSLib
  • founder: pycsw, GeoHealthCheck, pygeoapi, pygeometa
  • contributor: OSGeo-Live, numerous others
  • helped organize the first OSGeo C tribe code sprint (Toronto, Canada)
  • code sprints attendance (2009, 2011, 2014 [FOSS4G-PDX], 2017, 2018)

What your interests are in terms of the board

  • do-ocracy
  • continuous improvement on lowering the barrier to geospatial tools for anyone
  • I regard participating in the Board a continuation of helping OSGeo in any way I can in another capacity. In addition, having a term on the Board will also help infuse new thinking in both day-to-day and strategic issues

Any things that you would like to change or introduce

  • balance of hosted services vs. OSGeo infrastructure to maximize efficiency of our precious resources
  • sandbox infrastructure
  • put forth the concept of an OSGeo registry of resources (datasets, software, applications) that are local to OSGeo or remote
  • increase focus / lower the barrier to OGC implementation given the new direction of OGC service specifications
    • participation in OGC hackathons
    • CITE compliance
  • more sprints ('working sessions', i.e. code, docs, projects, etc.), promote remote sprint concept more
  • harden core packaging efforts (UbuntuGIS, DebianGIS, etc.) to become more sustainable

What role you would wish to fulfil on the board (if any)

A trusted voice as part of a leadership team and community to help steer OSGeo in achieving its goals for the long term.

Nicolas Bozon

Dear Charter Members,

Thank you for nominating and considering me as a potential OSGeo director. This is a great honor to take part to this election once again and to run along with excellent candidates.

About me

I am a geo data expert in the business hours, and a (map) designer in my free time. I came to open source GIS during my PhD back in 2006, while i was looking for tools that i could fully control to reach my research goals. It did not take long at that time to meet OSGeo people and tools, adapt the software to my needs, attend my first FOSS4G, and then just feel like at home in our community.

I've been using, designing and promoting open source technologies since then, alternating research and business experiences, and sometime make them interact. Most recently, i am experiencing life inside a major proprietary software company for better or worse. I am trying to take the best of both worlds everyday, with strong open source and open data ethics in the background. Please follow the links bellow to learn a bit more about me.

My vision

Today, my passion and commitment to the OSGeo Foundation have never been stronger. Looking at our global growth and significant technical and educational achievements, I am even more proud to be part of such a lively, determined and clever community.

OSGeo has entered an important transition period, from a group of active developers to an inclusive community of users, developers, advocates and entrepreneurs. It must yet strengthen its aura and adoption across the broader geospatial community and industry. Everything is in our hands to show the value of our work even better, and make open source geospatial rules.

What you have done within the community in the past

  • Charter member since 2011
  • Marketing committee member since 2012.
  • Already nominated for the Board elections in 2012 and 2016.
  • Attended and sometimes talk or workshop at FOSS4G in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2016.
  • Part of the FOSS4G-Europe organisation committee in 2015 and 2017.
  • Part of the FOSS4G-Asia organisation committee in 2014, 2017 and 2018.
  • Part of the FOSS4G-Fr organisation committee in 2013 (FROG) and 2014
  • Co-founded ZOO-Project in 2008 and member of its PSC since 2009.
  • Co-founded MapMint in 2011, the 100% service-oriented open source SDI.
  • Help redesign the GRASS GIS website back in 2012
  • Created mapsk.in, the visual language for geospatial in 2016 (to be continued)
  • Currently working on the OSGeo symbols set and branding style guide.

What your interests are in terms of the board

  • Simply do my best to serve our community and represent our international family.
  • Help continue to implement our vision, especially on the marketing and outreach sides.

Any things that you would like to change or introduce

  • Avoid this year situation, where there were not enough motivated people to run for the board elections after the nomination deadline (never again!)
  • Propose new ways of governance that may help us to be more efficient, or at least attract more volunteers to the chapters, committees and board.
  • Empower charter members in a more efficient way, i think we need to be part of more strategic decisions
  • Keep FOSS4G event affordable for everyone, encourage regional events and initiatives like travel grants, academic bursaries, student awards etc..
  • Push forward stronger engagement with the industry and governments to stimulate endowment and sponsorship for OSGeo.

What role you would wish to fulfil on the board (if any)

I am ready for any role.

Happy voting to all !


Victoria Rautenbach

https://www.osgeo.org/member/rautenbach/
https://www.up.ac.za/en/geography-geoinformatics-and-meteorology/article/2735602/victoria-rautenbach

About me

I am a geoinformatics lecturer in the Department of Geography, Geoinformatics and Meteorology at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. At the University, I teach spatial databases, web mapping and data analysis using open source technology to (mainly) final year geoinformatics students. In 2014, as part of my PhD, I found that I have a passion for community engagement and started to incorporate this into my teaching. This has been life changing to me and I believe that this also had a lasting impact on the students.

During my undergraduate degree, I was introduced to OSGeo and specifically to PostGIS by Prof Serena Coetzee as part of a database module. This is where my passion for geospatial open source started. When Serena opened the GeoforAll lab at our University and I was privileged to be part of the lab and meet the then-president, Jeff McKenna. I fell in love with the idea of OSGeo then, and even more in the next two years as an MSc student working on Zoo WPS and being welcomed by Nicolas Bozon into the Zoo community. These interactions proved that OSGeo is an inclusive community committed to promoting the development and adaption of open source geospatial software.

Thank you to Astrid Emde and Jeff McKenna for nominated me for the OSGeo board, and Nicolas Bozon, Barend Köbben, Serena Coetzee and Maria Antonia Brovelli for supporting the nomination. I greatly appreciate this nomination and am honoured to be considered.

My vision

Capacity building through open source geospatial software is the key to creating a sustainable tomorrow.

I believe that my vision aligns with OSGeo’s vision, “Empower everyone with open source geospatial”. This vision is especially relevant in developing countries where there are little to no funds available for data or software. It is important for these communities to be introduced to open data sources, such as OpenStreetMap, and open geospatial technologies to empower them to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

What you have done within the community in the past

Over the last couple of years, I have been involved in promoting open source, open data and open education within our university and surrounding schools. At the university, I have organised various open data events for university students and school learners. For these efforts, I was honoured as the GeoForAll GeoAmbassadofor in November 2016.

Most recently, I was a mentor (2017) and then also the co-admin (2018) for the Google Code-in competition. Google Code-in (GCI) is an annual online competition aimed at introducing pre-university students (13-17 years) to open source projects, development and communities, through short 3-5 hour tasks. This is a unique opportunity to interact with pre-university students and to encourage them to become part of OSGeo. You can read more about GCI here in our 2018 FOSS4G paper.

In 2018, Frikan Erwee and I mentored Xuri Gong in the Google Summer of Code to develop the pgAdmin geometry viewer. The viewer allows the user to view geometries directly in pgAdmin, which was not possible previously. Read more here.

For the UN Open GIS programme, I served as a mentor in the 2017 PostGIS courses and now lead the QGIS courses presented (October 2018 – January 2019).

What your interests are in terms of the board

To continue to be an OSGeo advocate but also work with the other members of the board and community to increase the number of young professionals that get involve in OSGeo, especially in developing countries. This will also, in turn, increase the geospatial capacity in developing countries. Working with marketing to show these young professionals that OSGeo is not only for developers, but there are various other ways to contribute.

Any things that you would like to change or introduce

As previously mentioned, I would like to work with the other members of the board and various committees to continue changing the perception that OSGeo is exclusively for developers. We should continue to encourage students and young professionals to become part of and contribute to OSGeo – growing our community. Also working with the Google programmes and UN Open GIS to expand the capacity building efforts in developing countries.

What role you would wish to fulfil on the board (if any)

I am passionate about education and capacity building. These interests have placed me in a wide spectrum of roles. I pride myself as an individual that is available and willing to assist where and when needed.

Angelos Tzotsos

About me

My name is Angelos Tzotsos. I am a remote sensing scientist/researcher and have been a FOSS developer for more than half of my life. I wrote my first program at the age of 11 and installed my first GNU/Linux distribution in 1997. I started working with Free and Open Source Software as an undergraduate student in engineering. I was very excited with the quality of the code and got determined to contribute back and help the community. I am very proud to be a member of the OSGeo community and honored to be nominated again for a position at the Board of Directors.

My vision

In my early days in academia, my vision was to inspire young people to join our community (or any other FOSS community) and discover the technical and ethical revolution of Free and Open Source Software, the way I did. In the last few years, while being also active on the business side, I have realized the need for a sustainable future for our FOSS4G projects and the need to keep promoting open source solutions to governments, organizations, universities, research institutions, private companies, users and decision-makers. I also see the need to continue reaching out to other communities and organizations.

What you have done within the community in the past

  • OSGeo Board member 2016-2018. Participated in all board meetings.
  • OSGeo Vice-President since 2017.
  • OSGeo charter member since 2011.
  • Chair of the OSGeoLive PSC and core developer.
  • OSGeo Project Officer for pycsw and OSGeoLive.
  • Core developer and contributor of many projects like pycsw, GeoNode, ZOO-Project, OTB (more contribution details can be found on my wiki page https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Angelos_Tzotsos).
  • Maintainer of UbuntuGIS.
  • Maintainer of openSUSE Geo.

What your interests are in terms of the board

My first priority is keeping a healthy and viable OSGeo community. I recognize that there have been some incidents of conflict between some of our members in the last couple of years and I wish to bridge the differences where possible as I feel that I have an understanding of issues pertaining to both academia and business. It is vital for us to stay together and find working solutions. I also want to help keep a strong connection between OSGeo and OGC, since I feel this cooperation benefits both organizations. During my term as a board member, I have helped our projects being active in OGC especially in the certification program. I plan to keep working towards this direction. I also want to help strengthen our connections with large communities like OSM and Open Data. I feel that the last board has made progress in this direction (happy to see strong OSM attendance in various FOSS4G events). For my previous board term, one goal was to increase support for SAC and marketing committees (in terms of funding) so that OSGeo is more attractive for new projects to join. The board indeed funded both those committees and helped them to create and maintain a new OSGeo branding and web site. Now we need to make our infrastructure stronger and provide more services to our member projects. A critical priority of the board is to ensure that our graduated and incubated projects are sustainable. The board has introduced funding support for our projects in the last years, and my goal is to keep this happening. We also need to focus on keeping the projects healthy: as a board member I focused on monitoring our projects' status and asking their officers and PSCs to report to the board regularly. I also wish to be one of the voices in the board that remind all of us of our Free Software roots (Free is part of FOSS4G, even if not reflected in the OSGeo name), avoiding proprietary systems as much as possible.

Any things that you would like to change or introduce

Two years ago I said that I would like to work towards making our main event (FOSS4G) more accessible to people who cannot afford it. I feel that we have made some progress with the travel grant program, but we still have a long way to go. I would like to help the board keep the momentum. I would like to work towards expanding our community with more code/community sprints and regional FOSS4Gs around the world. Let's be more inclusive for projects and new members.

What role you would wish to fulfill on the board (if any)

I would be happy to serve the OSGeo Board in any role I am assigned.

Malena Libman

About me

I’m a enthusiastic and committed “porteña”, from Buenos Aires, Argentina, of the Geographic Information Systems and of the promotion of the use and development of FOSS4G through the development of communities.

In addition to my participation in OSGEO, within the communities related to GIS I have been Secretary of the board of the Argentine Cartography Center (an ONG with more than 60 years of existence), collaborated in the organization of the SOTM LATAM 2018 here in Buenos Aires and I participate in communities also linked to the issues like programming and mapping but with a with with a gender perspective like GeochicasOSM and Las de Sistemas (the systems ones (she)).

My university education is in GIS and I am currently a teacher of the Degree in GIS of the Tres de Febrero University.

I have worked as a consultant, workshop trainer and GIS specialist for companies and as a government employee in different GIS proyects such as: Transport, Security, Health, Cadaster, Geology, Geography and Spatial Data Infraestructures.

My vision

FOSS4G is central throughout the world, but it is especially important in developing countries, where it is a key tool both for the construction of local capacities and for its contribution to achieving greater cooperation at the regional community level in contexts of strong limitations of resources.

What you have done within the community in the past

I’m a part of Geoinquiet@s Argentina (Spanish speaking micro chapter) since 2012. I’ve participated in the organization of the regional FOSS4G Argentina in 2013 and 2016. I also chaired the 2017 edition that we did together with OSM Argentina, FOSS4G + SOTM Argentina de 2017. I was very lucky to be able to attend the last FOSS4G 2018 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, thanks to the travel grant program. Since then, I have been starting to participate in the OSGEO Marketing committee

What your interests are in terms of the board

I want to contribute so that OSGEO can promote the use of FOSS4G all over the world and for all people in a more effective way. For that, I consider it strategic to complement the most diverse views possible. In this sense, I believe that both Latin America has much to contribute to the strengthening of OSGEO and OSGEO has great potential to deepen and expand its actions in the region.

Any things that you would like to change or introduce

Reinforce the efforts for a more numerous, more protagonistic and more diverse participation by women from all over the world and from people in developing countries.

Promote a greater direct relationship between local chapters of the same region and exchanges between different regions, for example, trough participation in regional conferences of representatives from regions other than those that organize it.

What role you would wish to fulfill on the board (if any)

To me, just the fact of being a part of the board would be a dream come true, although I am sure that I have many useful things to contribute, I believe that I still have much to learn from the commitment and experience of the men and women who make up the board.

For that I would like to thenk María Arias de Reyna for nominating me and the support of Vicky Vergara for the nomination.

Michael Smith

About me

or those of you that don't know me, I'm Michael Smith, a physical scientist at the US Army Corps of Engineers. I've been involved with the MapServer community since 2001 and OSGeo since its inception. For the last 4 years, I've been honored to be a OSGeo Board member and the OSGeo treasurer. It’s been quite a learning experience and I greatly thank Daniel Morissette, the previous OSGeo treasurer for so much support in handling the transition.

My vision

In my time on the board and as treasurer, my focus has been on encouraging governments (in general) and the US in particular, especially the Department of Defense which, personally I know makes extensive use of OSGeo projects, to more actively participate is OSGeo and the projects beyond just use and occasional commits.

What you have done within the community in the past

What your interests are in terms of the board

If reelected, I plan to continue as OSGeo Treasurer. Its been a bit of a learning experience handling the funds from OSGeo, learning how to do the non profit tax filings for the US Government (where OSGeo is incorporated) and handling distributions of funds to Code Sprints and Events. Its also been a lot of fun to work directly with groups and individuals all over the world with OSGeo. Its been a very rewarding experience.

Any things that you would like to change or introduce

What role you would wish to fulfill on the board (if any)

If reelected, I plan to continue as OSGeo Treasurer.

It’s really wonderful to see a great group of new candidates to the board. Its wonderful to see the diversity and multiple regions of the world represented in the candidates. Thank you for the nomination, OSGeo Community!

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