[Board] Foss4G21012 and the Academic Track

[Peter Batty]

Hi Barend,

Thanks for your email. It is the case that things are not as far along with
the organization of the Beijing conference as we had hoped at this point.
And at the same time Jeff McKenna, the conference committee chair, has
recently announced that he has other commitments that prevent him from
spending time on FOSS4G at the moment. The OSGeo board is currently in the
process of working out how to address these issues and ensure that things
are moving forward with the conference. We have a weekend face to face
board meeting in just under two weeks, at which this will certainly be a
major topic of conversation.

So please don't give up on the 2012 conference yet - the plan remains that
there will be a FOSS4G in Beijing in September 2012, and I am sure there
will be good support for continuing to strengthen the academic track. Board
members are working to get things back on track, and we will send out an
update shortly after our meeting, sometime the week of February 6, at the
latest.

Cheers,
    Peter.

2012/1/22 Barend Köbben <kobben at itc.nl>

> Hi all on the OSGEO board list,
>
> My name is Barend Köbben, and I was the one that probably was responsible
> for what was dubbed on this list "some mails about the academic track at
> FOSS4G in China". This is because I was asked to follow up on the OSGE-ICA
> MOU with a plan and action on strengthening the Academic Track at upcoming
> FOSS4G conferences. I set about organising this in early December, and
> have had enthusiastic replies and messages of support from many people,
> most importantly those on previous "scientific committees". Also I have
> had John Wilson of the 'Transactions in GIS' journal reacting positively
> on a possible multi-year deal for publishing.
>
> But from two "important players" I have had no feedback, namely from the
> local organizers and from OSGEO. I am most worried about the lack of
> progress on the local organizers' side... Mr Xianfeng Song (mentioned as
> the local committee lead for academic track) has answered that "the LOC
> ever had a meeting
> deciding to follow the customs to invite again those who ever working for
> past academic tracks. To encourage more academic paper submission (...)
> recommend to publish an IEEE conference proceeding.". I replied with a
> question on how definite that was and if any contacts had been established
> with IEEE, but only got a noncommittal reply with promises of things "soon
> to come".
>
> So like some on this list, I started to wonder what the status of the
> conference is at the moment. I had really wanted to send out a first Call
> for Papers before the New Year, but feel I really could not do that
> without positive feedback from the local organizers. And I have no good
> insight in the formal (or informal for that matter) relation between OSGEO
> and the local  FOSS4G organizers, so I have no idea which of the two is
> leading in this process.
>
>
> My gut feeling is to concentrate on setting up a proper publishing
> mechanism for Academic Tracks starting with the 2013 conference, and leave
> the current one to to the LOC. This is mainly because I'd like it to be a
> proper and worthwhile exercise, and time is basically becoming too short
> for that with a September deadline...
>
> But I feel it's not right to give up without first asking the OSGEO
> board's opinion about it. So consider yourselves asked for advice on how
> to (or if to) continue on this.
>
> Yours truly,
> --
> Barend Köbben
> (Senior Lecturer) ITC - University of Twente,
> Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation
> PO Box 217, 7500AE Enschede (The Netherlands)
> +31-(0)53 4874 253
>
>
>
> Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC)
> University of Twente
> Chamber of Commerce: 501305360000
>
> E-mail disclaimer
> The information in this e-mail, including any attachments, is intended for
> the addressee only. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby
> notified that any disclosure, copying, distribution or action in relation
> to the content of this information is strictly prohibited. If you have
> received this e-mail by mistake, please delete the message and any
> attachment and inform the sender by return e-mail. ITC accepts no liability
> for any error or omission in the message content or for damage of any kind
> that may arise as a result of e-mail transmission.
> _______________________________________________
> Board mailing list
> Board at lists.osgeo.org
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/board
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/board/attachments/20120122/030364d0/attachment.htm>