[Board] Student Award initiative

[Jeff McKenna]

I want to second Venka's message, that the certificates/awards that he 
and his FOSS4G-Asia team implemented, were very effective.  Kazeem 
Owolabi (best use case award) spoke to me directly at how he would use 
this certificate/award to further his work.

-jeff



On 2015-03-08 9:31 PM, Venkatesh Raghavan wrote:
> On 2015/03/09 4:46, Suchith Anand wrote:
>> Sure :-) Am i right in thinking that as this year as we have the
>> FOSS4G Global in Asia (Seoul), it will be FOSS4G-Asia in 2017 that we
>> will be focussing for this.
> Yes, since FOSS4G-2015 is already in Asia and a special Asia Session
> is also being organized at the event, there will be no separate FOSS4G-Asia
> event in 2015. We hope to organize FOSS4G-Asia in 2016.
>
> Best presentation awards for young researchers were already initiated at
> FOSS4G-Asia 2014 [1], where Award Certificate and a token gift were
> presented to the following three presentations.
>
> 1) Best FOSS4G Use Case Award to Kazeem Owolabi and others for
> "Use case: supporting polio eradication and Ebola outbreak response"
>
> 2) Best FOSS4G Developer Award to Gérald Fenoy and NIcolas Bozon
> for "MapMint: The 100% service-oriented GIS platform"
>
> 3) Best Poster Award to Jayasinghe and others for
>   "Assess the level of vulnerability to climate exaggerated disasters in
>   Sri Lankan Coastal Areas: An Application of Open Source Geographic
> Information System"
>
> While I am not sure about the sustainability of instituting cash awards,
> award of certificates is definitely valuable for young researchers.
>
> Venka
>
> [1] http://www.foss4g-asia.org/
>>
>> Best wishes,
>>
>> Suchith
>> ________________________________________
>> From: Massimiliano Cannata [massimiliano.cannata at supsi.ch]
>> Sent: Sunday, March 08, 2015 7:38 PM
>> To: Suchith Anand; ica-osgeo-labs at lists.osgeo.org
>> Cc: OSGeo Board
>> Subject: Re: [Ica-osgeo-labs] [Board] Student Award initiative
>>
>> To be fear i would add also foss4g-asia.. ;-)
>>
>> Il giorno 19:51 Dom 08/Mar/2015 Suchith Anand
>> <Suchith.Anand at nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:Suchith.Anand at nottingham.ac.uk>> ha
>> scritto:
>> Maxi,
>>
>> Thanks for your feedbacks and ideas. My answers below
>>
>> 1. Sure , let us name it OSGeo Student Awards Initiative.
>>
>> 2. "Giving the money to support the participation of winner to
>> international conferences so that they can meet the community and
>> learn"  is good idea. My suggestion is to leave the implementation
>> details to the respective LOCs. That will give them the flexibility to
>> decide which is the best way to distribute the awards for thier
>> particular conference to make maximum impact. For example maybe LOC1
>> might want to divide the 1k USD to 5 prizes so 5 students get bit of
>> support or another LOC2 might decide to allocate to one student only.
>> The Chair of the LOC should send a summary of the Awards to the OSGeo
>> Board after the conference.
>>
>> I also hope the LOCs will be inspired to actively find other sponsors
>> to further build value for the Student Awards. For example, we already
>> know that for FOSS4G 2015 conference in addition to OSGeo’s $1,000 ,
>> the FOSS4G Seoul LOC’s have kindly added their $1,500 contribution to
>> this. If any other sponsors want to give awards directly to the
>> students, the LOC could make the necessary arrangements.
>>
>> I agree with Jeroen's suggestion, that let us start small, learn and
>> then expand . So if everyone agrees, let us start with FOSS4G Global,
>> FOSS4G-Europe and FOSS4G-NA. Once the LOCs of these three events know
>> that there will be a support of 1k USD for their conference
>> specifically to support Student Awards, i am confident that they will
>> make the necessary arrangements to ensure stronger participation of
>> students in the conferences and also honour their contributions to
>> OSGeo and to wider Open Education initiatives.
>>
>> Best wishes,
>>
>> Suchith
>>
>> ________________________________________
>> From:
>> board-bounces at lists.osgeo.org<mailto:board-bounces at lists.osgeo.org>
>> [board-bounces at lists.osgeo.org<mailto:board-bounces at lists.osgeo.org>]
>> On Behalf Of Massimiliano Cannata
>> [massimiliano.cannata at supsi.ch<mailto:massimiliano.cannata at supsi.ch>]
>> Sent: Sunday, March 08, 2015 5:17 PM
>> To: Jeff McKenna
>> Cc: OSGeo Board
>> Subject: Re: [Board] Student Award initiative
>>
>> Jeff, suchith,
>> I agree to provide money to start student award, which is very
>> important in my opinion.
>>
>> Frankly speacking,  my concerns are about:
>> 1) osgeo is giving money for prize, and i see this a way also to
>> fidelize youngs to our association and take part of the community, so
>> i would like to see the award in the name of osgeo. Otherwise if it is
>> in the name of others, they have to contribute equally.
>>
>> 2) i see the potential of bracking down prizes to conferences where
>> few competitors are concurring. In these cases I would rather give
>> money to support the participation of winner to international
>> conferences so that they can meet the community and learn
>>
>> Just for the record, during he last meeting i suggested to approve the
>> seed money and then decide case to case based on further specification.
>>
>> Btw, i think that having 5k is a good starting point.
>>
>> Maxi
>>
>> Il giorno 08/mar/2015 14:24, "Jeff McKenna"
>> <jmckenna at gatewaygeomatics.com<mailto:jmckenna at gatewaygeomatics.com><mailto:jmckenna at gatewaygeomatics.com<mailto:jmckenna at gatewaygeomatics.com>>>
>> ha scritto:
>> Thanks for this message Suchith.  Some members of the Board apparently
>> still have concerns, and I have asked them to directly respond to you
>> with their concerns.  Board: please do reply to this message if you
>> have questions for Suchith and the GeoForAll community.
>>
>> I personally feel that we the Board should support this Student Award
>> initiative, and provide the 10k in seed funds for awards.  The
>> important point here is to give appreciation for students who push
>> FOSS4G in their research.  Students can use the awards as a way to get
>> further funding for their research, and also for continuing onto the
>> next graduate level of their studies.  And our community benefits by
>> having yet another passionate advocate for FOSS4G.  Win-win.
>>
>> Thank you Board.
>>
>> -jeff
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 2015-03-07 2:40 PM, Suchith Anand wrote:
>> Dear Board,
>>
>> Please let us know what improvements/changes you want for the Student
>> Award initiative. As i told before , if you have specific ideas that
>> need to be in place please suggest them and we are happy to implement
>> any changes needed.
>>
>> We have been trying to get as much inputs from the community and all
>> inputs we got we have added including to start small (with three
>> events - FOSS4G, FOSS4G-Europe and FOSS4G-NA)
>>
>> We have put in lot of efforts to build up momentum for Openness in
>> GeoEducation over the years and now we are getting real momentum
>> building up in our Open Geo Education activities globally . It has
>> been combined efforts of all colleagues in OSGeo, ICA and ISPRS  who
>> all come together for the first time on this "Geo for All" mission of
>> making Geospatial Education and opportunities available for all that
>> made this momentum possible.
>>
>> I really hope we can make this Student Awards happen. It doesn't
>> matter which form it takes shape  but please make it happen.
>>
>> Best wishes,
>>
>> Suchith
>>
>>
>>
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