[OSGeo-Conf] My Prague questions

Thu Jul 14 06:39:58 EDT 2011

Hi Jeff (and others),

(this time, it took a bit longer)

2011/7/13 Jeff McKenna <jmckenna at gatewaygeomatics.com>:
> Hello Jachym and the Prague local committee,
>
> Thanks very much for your letter of intent to host FOSS4G 2012.  I have some
> questions about the points in your letter below (if some questions have been
> answered in one of your previous responses please do mention that is the
> case, no need to repeat them):
>
> - your local committee seems to lack members from the private sector, yet
> heavy on the academic and public sectors.  Am I wrong on this?  Or was this
> chosen with a purpose in mind?

Yes, you are wrong.  CCSS (http://ccss.cz) is something, what is
called Living Lab, it is
connecting  research organisations, as well as commercial subjects
together. There are more
commercial subjects using or developing FOSS solutions in CCSS.
CCSS provides not only research but also commercial activities, for example it
is deploying under commercial contract geoportals on Canarias Islands and in
Zemgale in Latvia. CCSS also plays role of incubator for small
companies (see members of CCSS
http://www.ccss.cz/en/?menuID=36&action=article&presenter=Article).

In our LoI, first one of "supporting organizations"
mentioned is Help Service - Remote Sensing ltd. (http://bnhelp.cz -
Czech-only) (maybe the meaning was little bit shifted with the
translation: "supporting organization" is not organization, which is
"expressing its positive meaning about having FOSS4G in Prague", but
organization, which will actively participate on the FOSS4G Conference
organization
itself.).  HS-RS is  known as developer and supporter of FOSS components, but
it also plays important role in commercial implementations. HS-RS is
building (among others)
Czech National INSPIRE portal (hundredth percent FOSS solution) and we are under
negotiation about the implementation of such portal  for Slovak
government, and also contract of
Spatial Planning System for Latvia.

Help Service (short form) is member of CCSS and so, we are in very
close connection. In some project,
it is difficult to define clear boarder between CCSS and its members,
because as we mentioned,
CCSS is working on Living Lab basis and so we are all (including WBU in Pilsen)
something like virtual organisation (but still with well and clear
defined economical structure) .

So I think, we can state, that the Prague organization committee
actually is very commercially oriented.

>
> - can you please explain the link between the CCSS and OSGeo/FOSS4G? Has
> this organization been active in the OSGeo/FOSS4G realm?

Maybe this is not so visible: CCSS is developing set of tools and
contributing to the development of various projects (in the "standard
foss-user way, via bug trackers), which are all together building
"our" Geoportal, Geohosting and other products.

As already mentioned, HS-RS
is member of CCSS. HS-RS is supporting development of PyWPS. As
side-effect of our work, we are often contributing to various
OSGeo/FOSS4G projects (MapServer, OpenLayers, Geotools, ..) On the
local business level, we were always propagating usage of FOSS4G for
our business (we were never "rebranding" used software, we are always
saying directly, what the under-lying libraries and tools are).

CCSS is implementing portal for a lot of European projects for education
(Metaschool), fully pan European solutions (like Briseide) or portal for
Black See region (EnviroGrid project). This helped a lot to communities
to the understanding of capabilities of FOSS4G and its
dissemination in Czech (and Europe).

We (HS-RS) also supported Czech OpenStreetMap project in the past,
by donation of some street data from our custom-build dataset. CCSS itself
started on year ago the initiative, which is calling 4th way to SDI and
which is focus on interconnection of governmental (INSPIRE based),
voluntary, and also commercial services. So CCSS is pushing open access to
data also. And CCSS start hosted on group servers freely available data,
which are not available as service.
And least but not last, CCSS sometimes provides financial support for
people from
Universities to participate on FOSS4G (for example Czech Universities are
not able to cover fully participation in South Africa etc.)

>
> - CULS seems to be not an option to host an international conference,
> because of its maximum capacity.  Have you begun discussions with Hotel
> Praha & Congress Centre?  What is their availability like?  Are you focusing
> on any specific dates/months yet?

According to their schedule, there is still time left in September
2012 (3 weeks out of 4). We are (in this first stage) focused on
September, but we are basically open to other months as well - depends
on the free time and overlapping with other conferences (I'm thinking
at Geoinformatics here, which is originally taking its place in
Spring, but it would make sense to join it together with FOSS4G next
year). We also have their price list for September 2012 and know
capacity of their saloons and halls. And we made some prebooking.

Anyway, we do not want to drop CULS so fast: it is very nice (at the
second glance) campus. We have very good experiences with them from
past years (this years conference runs well as well). Except for the
big hall, their capacity of rooms, computers etc. is outstanding.
Having low-cost accommodation capacity in place is also advantage. Not
to forget,
that the connection with the airport is more easy, than from the Top Hotel
Prague (still, as we have written in the LoI, Prague public transport
is very good). They already hosted conference with 1000 attendees.
Those (and others) are the reasons, we put CULS into the LoI. We will
keep on thinking. Due to computer rooms, broadband connectivity etc, it is
excellent place for workshops, tutorials etc.

>
> - has your local committee had any thoughts on the theme for your event?
>  (such as focusing on government/municipal support of FOSS4G, etc.)

Our idea is FOSS and Open Data Access as Opportunity for everybody. We would
like stress, what could be profit of municipalities, private commercial
subjects mainly SMEs, schools and others from FOSS, but also from Open Data
Access. To be focused on advantage of interoperability, open services and
free solutions for building solution  in the bottom up direction. It is our
philosophy. Since the conference would take place in Europe, naturally
INSPIRE directive
(very hot topic in Europe now) would naturally became one of the
topics of FOSS4G.
Not to forget: Bringing people together and having fun.

>
> Finally I have been to your beautiful city (in fact I traveled directly to
> Prague after FOSS4G 2006) and I would dearly enjoy some more time on the
> Charles Bridge.

Thank you. Even Charles Bridge is nice, there are definitively other nice places
in Prague and in Czech, which are worth to visit. Could be, that the
conference could help to know also better our country, not only Charles
bridge. And due the scale of our country it is not problem to organise trips
to some other UNESCO cultural heritage. We are looking forward to setup
small map  with recommendation about most interesting places for
conference attendees.

Thanks

Jachym

>
> Thanks,
>
> -jeff
>
>
>
>
>
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>

-- 
Jachym Cepicky
e-mail: jachym.cepicky gmail com
URL: http://les-ejk.cz
GPG: http://les-ejk.cz/pgp/JachymCepicky.pgp