[OSGeo-Discuss] FOSS GIS/RS Primer: Call for Authors

[Franck Martin]

I have been tasked as part of the Pacific Islands IOSN Node (www.iosn.net)
to organise the writing of a FOSS GIS/RS Primer. Several primers have been
already written on various subjects, like FOSS and education, FOSS and
Licensing and FOSS and Gender (http://www.iosn.net/publications/foss-primers).
The IOSN is principally driven by the Asia Pacific Development Information
Programme (www.apdip.net).

The purpose of a primer is to raise awareness of FOSS for managers and
technicians which have not been exposed or little exposed to FOSS. This is
not a technical manual but rather a guide on the issues with FOSS in a
particular area.

I have thought that the primer should be divided in the following chapters,
each one covering a theme:

   -

   Geographic Information Systems (QGIS, JUMP, Udig, ...)
   -

   Remote Sensing (GRASS, Idrisi, ...)
   -

   Web Mapping and Publishing (Mapserver, CartoWeb, Tikiwiki, GMT, ...)
   -

   Global Positioning Systems (gpsd, mapdecode, ...)
   -

   Migrating from non FOSS and interaction with non FOSS (gdal, ogr, ...)

There would be a summary chapter preceding all the themes to provide a kind
of executive summary on the status of FOSS. I put in brackets, some examples
of applications that should be covered to give some guidelines.

I have a budget, which would provide around USD500 per author of each
theme+summary as compensation for their efforts.

I have discussed this proposal with OSGeo Director and the OSGeo EDU
chairman which support the idea of working together on this initiative.

I'm looking from the OSGeo community 5 authors from the Asia Pacific region
by preference (leaving there or from there originally) who would like to
work on a theme (ten A5 pages each, see previous primers).

The draft Primer will be submitted to the OSGeo for comments and corrections
and each author would correct his/her part, then a draft will be submitted
to APDIP (www.apdip.net) for review and comments and finally a public review
will be organised by APDIP. At this stage the manuscript will be put in a
final layout and authors will check it. The final layout will then be
published.

The OSGeo foundation as well as the other organisations participating in
this exercise will be duly recognised on the primer. I will try to secure
some forewords by major contributor of the GIS/RS FOSS community.

All primers are published under the Creative Commons license, so OSGeo and
the authors will be able to reuse the text for their own means.

Needless to say that this exercise will bring karma points to the Authors
and Organisations participating in this exercise. The primers are quite
successful and widely distributed by APDIP.

To start with, I'd like some comments on the organisation of the primer (5
themes max) and I would like that authors indicate to me their interest in
tackling a particular theme, please submit references of your work in the
FOSS GIS/RS community and a short resume about yourself.


-- 
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Franck Martin
franck.martin at gmail.com
"Toute connaissance est une réponse à une question"
G. Bachelard
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/discuss/attachments/20070507/465e9e69/attachment-0001.html>