[Board] GIS for the United Nations and the International Community Conference

[Margherita Di Leo]

Dears,

with some colleagues we noticed the following event organized at UN:
http://www.gisfortheun.com called "GIS for the United Nations and the
International Community Conference". At a closer look at the agenda (
http://www.gisfortheun.com/agenda/index.html), it turned out that the only
GIS mentioned is Esri.

At the beginning we thought that Esri was a sponsor, but apparently it does
not seem to be the case http://www.gisfortheun.com/sponsors/index.html
However, although the very general title, turns out that the event is
co-organized by Esri. Indeed in the home page, it reads:

"The event is jointly hosted by UNITAR's Operational Satellite Application
Programme (UNOSAT) and Esri."

I don't have anything against Esri but with such general title, it seems
misleading that no other software representative is invited. For the sake
of diversity, some OSGeo software might as well be part of this event. Just
to be sure that people do not think that Esri is the only GIS on Earth.
Otherwise, if it is an advertising event, it could just be clear in the
title: instead of just GIS, it could as well be called "Esri GIS for the
United Nations and the International Community Conference".

What do you think? Could OSGeo politely ask Esri to clarify the situation
and either open up to the broader GIS community or just change the title of
this event? Would the board take action in this sense?

Thank you

-- 
Best regards,

Dr. Margherita DI LEO
Scientific / technical project officer

European Commission - DG JRC
Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IES)
Via Fermi, 2749
I-21027 Ispra (VA) - Italy - TP 261

Tel. +39 0332 78 3600
margherita.di-leo at jrc.ec.europa.eu

Disclaimer: The views expressed are purely those of the writer and may not
in any circumstance be regarded as stating an official position of the
European Commission.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/board/attachments/20150429/7ac6d7d3/attachment.htm>