[Board] Romanian local chapter

Tue Dec 14 09:00:18 PST 2010

Dear Tyler,

I sending you the official expression of interest from the Romanian 
local chapter to be recognized as a full OSGeo local chapter (actually 
I'm hitting the "Send" button right in the middle of your OSGeo 
presentation here in Barcelona :)

Please forward this to the board of directors.

Warm regards,
Vasile

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Dear members of the OSGeo board,

My name is Vasile Crăciunescu and I am writing you in the name of the 
Romanian "in formation" local chapter. This letter is an official 
expression of interest to be recognized as a full OSGeo local chapter. 
Our motivation and achievements follows.

Introduction

The idea of starting an Romanian OSGeo Local Chapter came out after 
FOSS4G2006 but it begin to shape after FOSS4G2007. For the moment, the 
main vehicle for FLOSS & OSGeo promotion is geo-spatial.org. The website 
(Romanian only at this point) represents a collaborative effort by and 
for the Romanian community to facilitate the sharing of geospatial 
knowledge and the discovery and publishing of free geographic datasets 
and maps. Anyone can make a contribution by submitting articles or 
datasets for publication, adding comments to the existing articles, join 
the discussion on the mailing list or user’s forum. The website was 
created in order to overcome some of the dysfunctions related to 
geospatial domain in Romania (lack of geodata, metadata, SDI, obsolete 
rules regarding the rights to own and use geodata, time consuming 
bureaucratic procedures related to geodata share/exchange between the 
interested institutions, lack of a coherent educational strategy, 
specialized courses in faculties, books, journals, discussion forums). 
Currently we have an active mailing list with more than 300 subscribers 
and a formal board with 13 members from industry and academic institutions.

geo-spatial.org website

The website is divided in several functional sections. In each section, 
the information is placed in predefined categories and sub-categories. 
Most of the sections contains written materials:
- Articles: theoretical essays on geospatial topics;
- Tutorials: materials indented to teach the user, in a step by step 
manner, how to work with certain datasets, software, technique etc;
- Reviews: reviews for geospatial datasets, cartographic products, 
software, articles, books;
- Links: collections of references to other online resources;
- Blog: a non conventional section for publishing thoughts, ideas, 
findings etc.
- Download section contains categories for all kind of geospatial data 
(digital elevation models, processed satellite images, vector data: 
communication networks, localities, hydrographical networks, contour 
lines, points of interest etc.) at different scales and spatial extend. 
Other categories contain documents (PhD thesis, scanned books & 
articles), old maps, software.

FOSS4G promotion

1. Written materials
One of the main ideas behind geo-spatial.org is to promote the use of 
free and open source geospatial software. Multiple articles, tutorials 
and blog entries on geo-spatial.org are dedicated to this subject. At 
this moment, 30 articles, tutorials and reviews are specifically 
targeting FOSS4G software and are registered in the OSGeo Educational 
Content Inventory.

2. Workshops and meetings
-28 February 2008: meeting in a pub. 17 attendees. City: Bucharest 
(http://earth.unibuc.ro/index.php?id=240)
-30 May 2008: meeting in a pub. 7 attendees. City: Cluj Napoca.
-25 September 2008: meeting at the Faculty of Geography - University of 
Bucharest. Presentations on open source software use (VTP, OpenLayers, 
Geoserver, PostGIS, Geonetwork, LeoWorks) and free talks. 21 attendees 
(http://earth.unibuc.ro/index.php?id=241).
-23 October: meeting at the Faculty of Geography - University Alexandru 
Ioan Cuza. 35 attendees. City: Iasi. Practical introductions to open 
source webmapping software (OpenLayers, Geoserver), OpenStreetMap 
Romania presentation and live demos, free talks 
(http://earth.unibuc.ro/index.php?id=242).
-13-14 December 2008: first real "hands on" workshop on webmapping. 13 
attendees. City: Brasov (http://earth.unibuc.ro/index.php?id=243).
-3-4 of April 2009, in partnership with the Faculty of Geography - 
University Babes - Bolyai, Cluj Napoca, we have organized a seminar on 
free and open source geospatial solutions (GeoServer, OpenLayers, VTP, 
Leoworks, SAGA GIS). 120 attendees. City: Cluj Napoca 
(http://earth.unibuc.ro/index.php?id=244).
-16-18 of April 2010, second edition of the Romanian GFOSS workshop 
(GDAL, OpenGeo Suite, VTP). The largest Romanian OSM mapping party was 
organised in the final day. 140 attendees. City: Cluj Napoca 
(http://earth.unibuc.ro/index.php?id=294).

3. Campaigns
An open letter, signed by 39 GIS users, was sent to the Romanian 
National Mapping Agency, asking to support us in replacing the existing 
transformations between the Romanian coordinate systems and WGS84 in 
EPSG tables with more accurate (and public) ones. The answer was 
positive and the new transformations were approved by EPSG board.

4. Free geodata
We try to publish the data under the public domain license. That means 
that everyone can use, redistribute, modify or sell the data without 
needing any permission. For the authors who want a more restrictive 
license model, we use PGL, a form inspired from LGPL software license.

Romanian chapter role

* Promote OSGeo and FOSS4G software via geo-spatial.org
* Promote OSGeo and FOSS4G software at local events (conferences, 
workshops, demonstrations, different meetings)
* Organize special events to promote OSGeo and FOSS4G software
* A bridge between Romanian software developers and users
* Software and documentation localization and internationalization
* Translate the important sections of OSGeo website
* Promote open standards adoption for the geo-information
* Promote the free access to geodata
* Write new project proposal related to the spread/develop of FOSS4G 
software

More detailed information is available in the annual reports sent to 
OSGeo. If additional details are required we here to provide all the 
necessary answers.

Yours sincerely,
Vasile Crăciunescu

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Vasile Crăciunescu
geo-spatial.org: An elegant place for sharing geoKnowledge & geoData
http://www.geo-spatial.org
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/geo-spatial