[Board] Re: Title for opening plenary

Arnulf Christl arnulf.christl at metaspatial.net
Fri Jun 10 10:08:30 PDT 2011


Folks,
I got the idea, makes sense.

The below abstract makes sense for our current board task anyway, so we 
might consider this more as a home work for all of us. We should 
formulate some answers in the next weeks. Maybe we should even schedule 
for a deadline, as we know this is the best (if not only) way we 
function. :-)

I'll try to whip up something more appropriate, but will need a few more 
hours. Feel free to use anything general if you want to launch the web 
site now.

Cheers,
Arnulf.

On 06/09/2011 10:36 PM, Peter Batty wrote:
> I would second Tyler's comments. We are trying to attract quite a few
> new folks to the conference and I think in the opening session we should
> focus mainly on the things that are going well, the growth in usage of
> open source, etc etc. Of course I think it's okay to say there are more
> things we (OSGeo) would like to do, but I'd rather not say we don't
> address the needs of larger organizations in industry and government ...
> I'm sure there is more we could do there, but certainly our software
> does address the needs of those large organizations and more and more
> are using it.
>
> So overall I'd focus on summarizing progress and make it positive, and
> more briefly raise questions that we should discuss during the
> conference about areas where OSGeo could improve.
>
> One other thing just to mention ... we now have Paul Ramsey in the third
> slot in the opening session with a talk called "Why do you do that? An
> exploration of open source business models", in case that factors into
> your thoughts on what to cover or not cover.
>
> Cheers,
>      Peter.
>
> On Thu, Jun 9, 2011 at 10:54 AM, Tyler Mitchell <tmitchell at osgeo.org
> <mailto:tmitchell at osgeo.org>> wrote:
>
>     The lightning talk style overview "state of OSGeo" talk I gave
>     before went over well.  A bunch of encouraging stats, a few
>     challenges a few goals to aim for  - keeping it light made it easy
>     even for folks who don't care about OSGeo to learn a bit and sit
>     through the talk too.  I would tend to leave the heavier discussions
>     for the AGM where everyone enjoys discussing the deeper challenges
>     and direction.
>
>     Just my thoughts,
>     Tyler
>
>     On 2011-06-09, at 8:24 AM, Arnulf Christl wrote:
>
>      > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>      > Hash: SHA1
>      >
>      > Peter Batty wrote:
>      >> Hi Arnulf, sorry for the short notice but I wondered if you
>     could give me a
>      >> title for your talk in the opening session. I guess "The State
>     of OSGeo"
>      >> would be an option, but let me know what you prefer. And perhaps
>     a short
>      >> abstract, a couple of sentences would be fine. If there's any
>     way of getting
>      >> this to me tomorrow (Thursday) that would be much appreciated.
>      >>
>      >> Cheers,
>      >>    Peter.
>      >
>      > Hi Peter,
>      > "The State of OSGeo" if fine.
>      >
>      > One idea might be to present the OSGeo "business plan" for 2012?
>     We do
>      > not have it yet but we will have one in time for FOSS4G.
>      >
>      >
>      > Board,
>      > I include you to give your opinion. This is a first idea for my
>     FOSS4G
>      > keynote as president of OSGeo and I would like to get broad
>     feedback and
>      > not do something specific of my own (this will happen automagically
>      > during the talk anyway... :-) This is really on short notice so
>     please
>      > hit reply and then take a minute to consider and comment.
>      >
>      > Thanks.
>      >
>      >
>      >
>      > Now - what abstract could that be? I'll give it a spontaneous try:
>      >
>      > OSGeo has come of age. The structure of the foundation is clear
>     and our
>      > mission and goals are defined. We have achieved what we set out
>     to do,
>      > everything runs smoothely. Sure - lots of things can still be
>     improved
>      > and there is a never ending stream of great new ideas but all in
>     all we
>      > are headed in the right direction and - humbly - doing a great job.
>      >
>      > Now what? This is a question that an organisation as a system cannot
>      > answer on its own. It needs to be worked out by the community
>     supporting
>      > the organization. And this community is getting diverser by the
>     day. The
>      > initial focus was set by the developers of well known FOSS4G
>     projects,
>      > mostly supported by small companies and power users. Over the
>     past years
>      > more and more interest was signalled by larger organizations,
>     both from
>      > the public sector and industry. But OSGeo has not yet formed
>     itself to
>      > be able to address their needs. One question we may (or must) ask
>      > ourselves is whether we want to address the needs of these larger
>      > organizations. Nota Bene: this is not people anymore but full fledged
>      > systems and thus asks a lot of different things of us.
>      >
>      > This presentation will show several paths to evolve OSGeo and
>     intends to
>      > trigger some thought in you (the attendees of this conference) as to
>      > what you want OSGeo to become. We are a collective of experts in
>     a small
>      > but deep niche, the geospatial domain. And everyone is watching us as
>      > the relevance of location - Geo - and Open Source is becoming
>     more and
>      > more obvious for so many processes.
>      >
>      >
>      >
>      >
>      > Too long? Think a different message would make more sense? Feel
>     free to
>      > amend, hack, cirticize or just take it as is.
>      >
>      > Best regards,
>      > Arnulf
>      >
>      > - --
>      > Nothing makes sense, except we make it.
>      > http://www.metaspatial.net
>      >
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