[OSGeo-Discuss] Re: FOSS4G 2007 Workshop Submission

[Daniel Ames]

Paul and others,

I too was disappointed to be in the 22 of 34 workshop proposals that were
turned down and would like to suggest that the conference organizers
re-think the approach to include more workshops.

At FOSS4g2006, I found the workshops to be perhaps the most useful element
of the conference.  For a highly technical meeting, the value of a 1.5 to 3
hour hands-on workshop versus a 20 minute pre-canned powerpoint presentation
can not be overstated.

Our project (and I suspect many others) has tried to embrace the concept of
the FOSS4g venue as an alternative to hosting our own separate conference.
Certainly this concept was encouraged by last year's conference organizers.
However for this to work there needs to be the opportunity to present our
workshops.

May I suggest the following two changes:

1) Reallocate time for more workshops.
2) Let the registrants decide which workshops stay.  In other words, post a
list of 34 workshops and keep only those that meet a minimum number of
committed/paid attendee registration fees.

I suspect that every one of the 22 rejected workshop proposers could argue
that they easily meet all of the four criteria listed here:
http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/FOSS4G2007_Workshops#Criteria_used_by_the_workshop_committee_to_review_workshop_submissions

Hence letting the broader community vote with their registration dollars
would seem to be a more "free and open" approach.

It would be unfortunate to see this as the beginning of a general culling
process where instead of trying to attract new projects, the FOSS4g
community begins to become more exclusionary.

Dan

Daniel P. Ames, PhD, PE
Idaho State University Geospatial Software Lab





On 3/29/07, Paul Ramsey <pramsey at refractions.net> wrote:
>
> Jeroen,
>
> I appreciate your frustration, and I know it is shared by many
> others, as only 12 of the 34 3-hour workshop submissions could be
> hosted.  The criteria the workshop committee used in their evaluation
> are here:
>
> http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/
> FOSS4G2007_Workshops#Criteria_used_by_the_workshop_committee_to_review_w
> orkshop_submissions
>
> All the committee members ranked the submissions on those criteria
> and the rankings were averaged.  Two workshops in the top 12 that
> were topic duplicates were removed and the next-lowest-ranked non-
> duplicates were moved up.  It appears that being on the committee is
> no guarantee of satisfaction with the final result. The average of a
> bunch of lists people want is a list that no one is 100% happy with.
>
> Paul
>
> On 28-Mar-07, at 10:36 PM, Jeroen Ticheler wrote:
>
> > Dear people,
> >
> > Thank you for your information. I have to say I find that pretty
> > frustrating and annoying knowing that GeoNetwork opensource is one
> > of the incubator projects of OSGEO, the number of OSGEO projects is
> > (still) limited and FOSS4G is the OSGEO conference.
> >
> > Participating with the project in OSGEO has multiple reasons, one
> > of them being that it provides opportunities to work on synergies
> > and work on marketing the OSGEO software stack. Now how does the
> > intent of OSGEOs mission fit with refusing a (single) workshop on
> > one of its projects. Maybe I miss something, but I'd assumed there
> > was at least some kind of a relation!?
> >
> > Looking forward to some good feedback and discussion on this, also
> > on the OSGEO mailing list as I consider that discussion very
> > relevant in the further development of outreach strategies for
> > ourselves and the OSGEO foundation through conferences.
> >
> > Core question:
> >
> > "Should OSGEO projects have guaranteed workshop and presentation
> > space for at least one session?"
> >
> > Regards,
> > Jeroen
> >
> > On Mar 28, 2007, at 5:58 PM, FOSS4G 2007 wrote:
> >
> >> Dear Jeroen Ticheler,
> >>
> >> We regret to inform you that we will not be able to accept your
> >> Half Day
> >> workshop, "Using the GeoNetwork opensource Spatial Data Catalog",
> >> for the
> >> FOSS4G 2007 program.  We had a very large number of submissions
> >> this year, and
> >>  have been able to accept less than half of them
> >> .
> >>
> >> We hope you will consider bringing some of your ideas to the
> >> conference in the
> >>  form of a presentation. The Call for Presentations is currently
> >> open, and
> >> there is room for 120 presentations at the conference this year
> >> .
> >>
> >> http://www.foss4g2007.org/presentations
> >>
> >> Yours,
> >>
> >> The FOSS4G 2007 Conference Committee
> >>
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss at lists.osgeo.org
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/discuss/attachments/20070329/d1a34c5c/attachment-0001.html>