[Geo4All] Connecting GeoForAll to another international community -- the International Association of the Study of the Commons (IASC)

[Charlie Schweik]

Dear GeoForAll colleagues,

(Nikos - could you include this in the next GeoForAll newsletter under
conferences?)

Sorry for a longer note on two potentially relevant conferences.

SOME CONTEXT:

A theoretical description of what OSGeo and GeoForAll have been doing is
the term "Commons-based Peer Production" -- or "Peer Production" for short
-- coined by legal scholar Yochai Benkler. A great summary of what Peer
Production is can be found at [1]. What we are producing in these groups --
open source software, open access educational material -- are examples of
"knowledge commons" that are created through Peer Production.

With the above said, I wanted to draw your attention (especially our
European colleagues) to two International Association of the Study of the
Commons (IASC)

UPCOMING CONFERENCES:

1) The IASC "thematic" conference in Paris on Knowledge Commons (October
20-22) [2].

While call for papers have ended, some of the topics may be of interest to
some on this list, and Track 7 is devoted to Knowledge Commons in the City
that might be relevant to OpenCitySmart.

2) The IASC global conference in July 10-14 in Utrecht, the Netherlands
[3].

Many of the participants in that conference are interested in environmental
commons (e.g., forests, fisheries, water resources, irrigation systems) and
have a real interest in GIS. Many participants are from developing
countries and would be very interested in learning FOSS4G technologies. If
our NSF proposal comes in, we will have some funds to send someone to this
conference to run a GeoForAll-related workshop. But even if that doesn't
come in, I'd like to do this. It could be some kind of introduction to QGIS
(or other desktop software) perhaps, or it could be something more
sophisticated.

If anyone is potentially interested in helping with this workshop idea,
please let me know. It also might be nice to have a set of papers submitted
to IASC related to our FOSS4G work in the education space as a form of
Knowledge Commons.

In short, I think GeoForAll and IASC need to be connected and it would be
useful for both organizations.

*Contact me if you have any interest in the Utrecht workshop idea in this
so we can brainstorm and plan. *

*And please let me know if anyone intends to go to the Paris Knowledge
Commons conference. *

Thanks!

Charlie






[1] http://www.benkler.org/Peer%20production%20and%20cooperation%2009.pdf
[2] http://knowledgecommons.paris/programme/
[3] http://www.iasc2017.org/

-- 
Charlie Schweik

Professor, Department of Environmental Conservation &
Interim Director of the School of Public Policy,
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
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