[OSGeo Africa] FOSSGIS-Africa conference updates

[ashley Gunter]

Hi Serena, Tim, Antony and others who may be interested in helping to organise our first African FOSSGIS event!

Just confirming our conference meeting tomorrow at 11:30 at Monash South 
Africa (directions: http://www.monash.ac.za/about/travel.html), when you 
get here park in the guest parking and report to the security office, 
they will be expecting you - then ask to be directed to the School of 
Arts staff room Building C,

See you tomorrow
Ashley

Tim Sutton wrote:
> Hi Serena
>
> On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 9:52 AM, Serena Coetzee <scoetzee at cs.up.ac.za> wrote:
>   
>> Dear Tim,
>>
>> great news that this is going ahead.  I would definitely like to be involved
>> in the academic side of organizing things.  Would Ashley Gunter also be
>> interested in this?
>>     
>
> I would think yes, but I believe he is travelling right now so when he
> returns we can hear from him directly.
>
>
>   
>>  Should I join him to form an academic committee?  From
>> the FOSS4G 2008 entries, it looked as if not too much is done on the
>> software development side in academia in Africa. However, I think on the
>> application side, there must be many stories to report.
>>     
>
> Yes I think it would be fine by me if you form an academic committee
> and start putting together a call for papers. I have been in contact
> with Till Adams, one of the organisers of the German FOSSGIS
> conference and from the last conference of theirs  I attended, I would
> say most papers I saw were applied GIS rather than GIS programming. Of
> course it would be great to stimulate African students and academics
> to get involved with actually *writing* FOSSGIS tools for their
> research and then making the tools public.
>
>
>   
>> In the mean time, I will try to find out more about how it is done at the
>> German FOSSGIS and come up with more concrete suggestions.
>>     
>
> I've cc'd Till in on this reply - I'm sure (hope :-) ) he won't mind
> if you contact him.
>
>  Although, the
>   
>> call for papers should probably be posted in February (already tight,
>> considering the reviews that will have to be done). Did you have any such
>> deadlines in mind already?
>>     
>
> I will get some promotional materials together over the next week and
> a half. If you can write up what is needed for the call for papers, I
> will incorporate that and then start a bit of a publicity campaign. I
> will just wait for Ashley's  return before I start sending out
> promotional materials in order to make sure all our ducks are in a row
> venue and date wise etc.
>
>
>   
>> And I am sure that I will find students to help as volunteers at the event
>> in exchange for free entry, for example.
>>
>>     
>
> Oh that will be great! I think Ashley also has some volunteers up his
> sleeve! I dont mind if (since this is our first one) things are fairly
> low key with say 50 to 100 attendees, of course I'll be thrilled if
> more can come. I would like to make as much of the process digital,
> paperless and automated as possible. It would be great to get Gavin's
> input so that we can use his experience from FOSS4G2008 to make thinks
> run smoothly
>
>
>
> Regards
>
> Tim
>
>
>
>   
>> Regards,
>> Serena Coetzee
>> Department of Computer Science
>> University of Pretoria
>> Pretoria, South Africa
>>
>> Tel: +27 12 420 2547
>> Fax: +27 12 362 5188
>> Mobile: +27 82 464 4294
>>
>> On 26 Jan 2010, at 15:11 , Tim Sutton wrote:
>>
>> Hi All
>>
>> A few weeks I posted to the list my interest in holding an
>> Africa-centric FOSSGIS get together this year. I received a very good
>> response with various offers for venues and assistance. Of the three
>> venues put forward I would like to use Monash University, Krugersorp,
>> South Africa since it offers everything we need:
>>
>> - venue being donated
>> - sufficient labs and lecture rooms
>> - support from the staff in-situ
>> - good transport network
>>
>> The Monash South Africa University campus web site is here:
>>
>> http://www.monash.ac.za/
>>
>> The venue was proposed by Ashley Gunter who is a lecturer at the university.
>>
>> I know it would have been nice to hold the conference somewhere more
>> central in Africa so that those to the north dont need to travel too
>> far, but since this is going to be our first time I think it will
>> logistically be easier to organise the process if the venue is closer
>> to home.
>>
>> I would very much like to make the entrance to the conference and
>> workshops free or very cheap. Currently our budget plan calls for a
>> registration fee of R500 per delegate and R1000 per workshop. We will
>> look at our options, but one great one would be to have a couple of
>> sponsors.
>>
>> The german FOSSGIS conference keep costs down by avoiding expensive
>> things like fancy catering (they offer soup and bread at lunch and
>> tea/coffee/biscuits at tea breaks) and I am looking to emulate their
>> approach as much as possible.
>>
>>
>> So what next? Now is the time to put together an organising committee
>> and start promoting our conference.
>>
>>
>> If you would like to assist with the organisation, please contact me.
>> Also if you have contacts for publicising the conference please
>> forward the promotional materials on to them when we have them ready.
>>
>> If you are an academic, please start thinking about what we could do
>> in terms of an academic track and make some proposals for suitable
>> people to review paper / poster submissions.
>>
>> I am going to set up a wiki page and other similar resources over the
>> next week or two and we can use that as the basis for collaboration.
>>
>> Best regards
>>
>> --
>> Tim Sutton - QGIS Project Steering Committee Member (Release  Manager)
>> ==============================================
>> Visit http://linfiniti.com to find out about:
>> * QGIS programming services
>> * Mapserver and PostGIS based hosting plans
>> * FOSS Consulting Services
>> Skype: timlinux Irc: timlinux on #qgis at freenode.net
>> ==============================================
>> _______________________________________________
>> Africa mailing list
>> Africa at lists.osgeo.org
>> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/africa
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Africa mailing list
>> Africa at lists.osgeo.org
>> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/africa
>>
>>     
>
>
>
>