[OSGeo-Announce] Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software - Call for Nominations

[Jeff McKenna]

The Open Source Geospatial Foundation would like to open nominations for 
the 2009 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 
SolKatzAward at osgeo.org with a description of the reasons for this 
nomination. Nominations will be accepted until midnight UTC on October 
9th 
(http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=10&day=09&year=2009&hour=23&min=59&sec=59). 
A recipient will be decided from the nomination list by an OSGeo 
designated selection committee.

The winner of the Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source 
Software will be announced on October 23rd at the FOSS4G 2009 conference 
(http://2009.foss4g.org/) closing plenary in Sydney, Australia. 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.

It should be noted that past awardees and selection committee members 
are not eligible.

Past Awardees:

  2008: Paul Ramsey
  2007: Steve Lime
  2006: Markus Neteler
  2005: Frank Warmerdam

Selection Committee:

  Jeff McKenna (chair)
  Frank Warmerdam
  Markus Neteler
  Steve Lime
  Paul Ramsey
  Sophia Parafina