[Board] Re: Romanian local chapter

[Vasile Craciunescu]

Hello Tyler & all,

Great news! Our next goal is to organize a national FOSS4G conference. I 
don't know if is possible for this year but for sure it will become a 
reality no later than 2012. Following the board of directors discussions 
before the vote we decided to make a more clear separation between the 
geo-spatial.org and the Romanian local chapter. Thus, we acquired the 
osgeo.ro domain. Currently is pointing to geo-spatial.org but soon it 
will host only information related to the Romanian local chapter and 
FOSS4G software.

Warm regards,
Vasile

On 2/3/11 7:56 PM, Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo) wrote:
> Vasile,
>
> At today's OSGeo Board of Directors meeting, your request for officially recognising the Romanian Local Chapter was approved!
> Thank you for your patience and follow up.  It was an extraordinary delay for various reasons (mainly mine!) but please do not see it as a lack of interest.  Your outline of the work the chapter is doing is very encouraging for the board to read about.  Congratulations and keep up the good work!
>
> Best wishes,
> Tyler
>
> ----
> Tyler Mitchell
> Executive Director, OSGeo
>
>
> On 2010-09-09, at 3:34 AM, Vasile Craciunescu wrote:
>
>> 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
>>
>>
>> =========================================================================
>>
>> 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 course
s 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
>>
>> --
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>> 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
>
>


-- 
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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