[Board] OSGeo Student awards for FOSS4G Seoul

[Jeff McKenna]

Hi Suchith,

The Sol Katz award is in its 11th year and it is part of each FOSS4G RFP 
document, but the local committee should not (does not) have to 
additionally do anything with the award, other than giving a timeslot to 
the award presentation (all the real work is done by the Sol Katz Award 
Committee, separate to the local organizing committee).  If GeoForAll 
wants the OSGeo Student Award to be included in each FOSS4G and managed 
by the FOSS4G committee, then GeoForAll should be requesting this to the 
OSGeo Conference Committee to be added as a requirement for hosting.

But in my mind that is not needed, what is needed is for GeoForAll to 
manage their award themselves:  contact OSGeo treasurer, print 
certificates/awards, arrange who to present award, ask local committee 
for timeslot, makes sure payment is received, publishes news.

-jeff



On 2015-09-08 9:01 AM, Suchith Anand wrote:
> Hi Jeff,
>
> I am ccing Geo4All members for their ideas/suggestions on this.
>
> My humble suggestion for the OSGeo Student Awards is if any FOSS4G (global or local) LOC wants to arrange OSGeo student awards then they have to take leadership in managing in process. That is the most effective way to make it scalable. It is LOC that are in charge of accepting papers and deciding who the peer reviewers are etc and selecting best students for the awards.
>
> Geo4All's  role is only to make sure the LOC is supported to arrange the OSGeo funding (max 1k USD per event) and whichever students are chosen by the LOC is awarded the OSGeo Student Awards. We will trust the LOCs and  should not micromanage the awards (it is just not practical)
>
> The LOC will be responsible to setting up the process (committees, selection etc) and making local arrangements (provide certificates,distribute the award money etc) for the student competitions etc and the chair of LOC should send a summary report to the OSGeo Board after the event. After one year based on feedbacks from Board, LOCs, Students , Community etc and lessons learnt we will aim to modify/expand this initiative for the future.
>
> The Seoul LOC must have some process in place though i do not know the details. But i trust Sanghee and the LOC on the local arrangements for the student awards. Please see discussions in May 2015 on this at http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/discuss/2015-May/014203.html
>
> I welcome feedbacks from the community on how we can learn from this and help make a better process for the OSGeo Student Awards.
>
> Suchith
> ________________________________________
> From: board-bounces at lists.osgeo.org [board-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] on behalf of Jeff McKenna [jmckenna at gatewaygeomatics.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, September 08, 2015 12:36 PM
> To: Suchith Anand; board at lists.osgeo.org
> Cc: shshin at gaia3d.com
> Subject: Re: [Board] OSGeo Student awards for FOSS4G Seoul
>
> Some background on this: I've been strongly asking the GeoForAll gang to
> manage these awards all themselves.  FOSS4G-Como was a learning
> experience in that there was no prep done for the "OSGeo Award" (no
> certificate/plaque, treasurer was not informed, what followed was 1.5
> months of back and forth emails from confused recipients to myself).
> Since then twice I have asked the GeoForAll to manage this award
> (created by them) fully themselves, and starting with FOSS4G-Seoul.
> Today I read Suchith's message saying for all local committees to manage
> the OSGeo Award - this is exactly not what I was requesting/saying.
> Local committees have enough on their plate, running each conference,
> this award must be managed entirely by GeoForAll (GeoForAll gang should
> contact OSGeo treasurer, print certificates/awards, arrange who to
> present award, ask local committee for timeslot, makes sure payment is
> received, publishes news).  Technically such a requirement would have to
> be approved by the OSGeo Conference Committee anyway, and likely added
> to the hosting RFP; but that shouldn't happen in my mind as this award
> should be managed entirely by the GeoForAll group.
>
> As background, I manage the Sol Katz award each year, now in its 11th
> year, so I know the effort involved.
>
> Suchith, please take this to the GeoForAll group and make changes to
> your plans accordingly.  And sorry for my strong message.
>
> Thanks,
>
> -jeff
>
>
>
>
> On 2015-09-08 6:03 AM, Suchith Anand wrote:
>> Dear Mike,
>>
>> On behalf of the Geo4All community, i would like to formally email and
>> request you to take steps to allocate 1000 USD for OSGeo Student Awards
>> to the FOSS4G 2015 Seoul LOC. As you might remember OSGeo Board had
>> approved our request for OSGeo Student awards at the main FOSS4G
>> conference and regional FOSS4G conferences (Europe, Asia, N.America).
>> The LOC's will be responsible  for making local arrangements for the
>> student competitions etc and the chair of LOC should send a summary
>> report to the OSGeo Board after the event. After one year based on
>> feedbacks from Board, LOCs, Students , Community etc and lessons learnt
>> we will aim to modify/expand this initiative for the future.
>>
>> Sanghee Shin as the chair of LOC (cc in) will be the main contact for
>> the FOSS4G 2015 OSGeo Student Awards. He will inform you details of the
>> winning students, how to distribute the award money etc.
>>
>> Sanghee - please coordinate with Mike directly and make arrangements for
>> the student awards. Thanks to you and the LOC for your efforts on this.
>>
>> Best wishes,
>>
>> Suchith
>>