Greetings all,<br><br>I'm just now getting back to the grindstone after Victoria and wanted to provide a summary of some of the discussions that took place as well as some of the directions that I see these taking us. I've tried to bring up things that were brought up by others, but do note I am not trying to shy away from my own editorializing.
<br><br>The main Geodata Committee activities at FOSS4G were comprised by a standing room only panel moderated by Schuyler along with Chris Holmes and myself on the panel and Jo piping up from the back of the room and a more intimate, but also more in depth BOF session which built on many of the themes which were brought up during the panel. Additional Geodata-ish activities could be seen in the strong presentations and labs put on by the GeoNetwork folks -- It was great for myself to really see what GeoNetwork is all about as I had never really gotten into it before this.
<br><br><br clear="all">Some of the issues that came up:<br>* metadata hosting<br> -- formal long metadata<br> -- simplified metadata<br> -- why the snot aren't we leveraging GeoNetwork more<br>* actual data hosting
<br> -- people who would like to see data<br> -- people who have data, but not the resources or business need to host themselves well<br>* showcase software with data<br> -- educational use<br> -- people like to see *their* house
<br>* Geodata licensing<br> -- licensing of specific data<br> -- licensing of formats<br><br>One of the trends that I saw harkens back to the lightning talk that Ed McNierney gave at the opening plennary: are we trying to build a 3/4" drill bit or are we trying to get a 3/4" hole. I think we have spent a lot of time trying to think about solutions to a problem that we haven't ever full defined.
<br><br>Some of the use cases that were brought up during the conference:<br>* Repository of base data sets that could be easily subset and sent to a location in on a drive or dvd in an emergency (low/no bandwidth situations)
<br>* Showcase foundation software (if this is a goal, we really need to make GeoNetwork a major priority)<br>* Catalog to easily find data that is perhaps hosted elsewhere<br>* Datasets for educational use (Grass has done an awesome job here)
<br>* Place to put data that nobody else has resources to host<br>* Place to put data that existing resources are inadequate for<br>* Place to reprocess data into value added products<br>* Resource to provide clarification and leadership on licensing issues
<br><br>One thing that I would like to see us do is to more clearly define a
single mission statement. Currently we have what I would describe as a
set of four objectives that address how we are going to do things, but
nothing that describes what it is that we are trying to accomplish and
more importantly perhaps why we are trying to accomplish them. Once we have clearly defined what our mission as a group is, I think that it will be easier to set up infrastructure and direct volunteer efforts in ways that will further both our mission as a group and the mission of OSGeo as a whole.
<br><br>I'd like to hear what things that other folks took away from the conference. Also from those who were not able to make it to the conference what $.02 do you have to add? Are we on the right track? Are we all scattered off doing our own thing?
<br><br>David<br>-- <br>************************************<br>David William Bitner