New Member Nominations 2008

Name	Notes
Andrew Ross	In a brief period of just over one year, Andrew has become one of the leaders in the open source geospatial community. Andrew has been involved in a number of activities in the past year that have demonstrated his commitment to the foundation. This includes playing a critical role in the early stages of incubation of GEOS into the OSGeo Foundation, encouraging Ingres to become a supporting sponsor of OSGeo, and most recently - organizing the "Geospatial OSBootcamp - Geospatial Software" in Ottawa, Canada in collaboration with OSGeo. As the technical lead for the geospatial component of the Ingres database, Andrew also play an important technology development role within the open source geospatial ecosystem.
Geoff Zeiss	He has been involved with OSGeo from early on and supports the work of the foundation in several significant ways. Geoff continually gives OSGeo good promotion by including it as a success story in his many keynote presentations around the world. He also helps find new and meaningful connections between groups and individuals sharing common interests in OSGeo-related subjects. His enthusiasm, long-term ideas, industry experience, moral support and practical assistance have been a great encouragement to our mission.
Charlie Schweik	Charlie is chair of the OSGEO education committee and an effective advocate for the use of open source geospatial software in academia. He is an Associate Professor with a joint appointment shared between the Department of Natural Resources Conservation and the Center for Public Policy and Administration at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is also the Associate Director of the National Center for Digital Government, and an affiliated researcher with the Science, Technology, and Society Initiative at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His research focuses on environmental management and policy, public-sector information technology, and the intersection of those domains. His recent peer-reviewed publications focus on free and open source software and the social frameworks and institutions that drive their development and use. A year ago he offered a college-level introductory GIS course using only open source software. The initial course was offered as a distance learning course and included participants from Nigeria, Uganda, Brazil, and the United States. Those materials are now available via the OSGeo Education web site. He is actively developing another course focused on remote sensing. It was through Charlie's hard work and persistence that the content for these courses will be openly distributed with a creative commons license. Charlie's formal training and experience as a computer programmer with academic interests in studying the open source movement and promoting the use of open source geospatial tools makes him well qualified to be a charter member of OSGEO.