[OSGeo-Discuss] Board Election: Peter Batty

[Peter Batty]

I agree with others that we have a very strong group of board candidates
this year, and that is a great sign for the strength of OSGeo. I would like
to thank Tyler Mitchell for nominating me.
I don't have the long and illustrious background in open source that many
fellow nominees have, I have just got involved with open source geospatial
solutions in the past few years. But I feel I can bring value to the board
because I do bring a different perspective from most other board members and
board nominees. I have worked in the geospatial industry for over 20 years,
and have been CTO of two of the top three (closed source) geospatial
software companies, Intergraph and Smallworld (still the leader in utility
GIS, now part of GE). I am well known and well respected in the broader
geospatial community outside the open source world, I regularly speak at
conferences around the world and have a well read blog called geothought (in
fact I just gave the opening keynote talk at AGI GeoCommunity, the main GIS
conference in the UK, and have been tied up there for the past couple of
days which is why I have not been able to post this statement sooner). This
puts me in a good position to help increase awareness of OSGeo and I do this
regularly in my conference talks. As someone who has a background in closed
source software but has used open source geospatial software for my latest
startup, I am in a strong position to help explain to other closed source
software users why they should switch to open source solutions.

I have served on the boards of multiple non-profit organizations, including
the geospatial educational organization, GITA, best known for its
conferences; the executive management team of several small and large
companies; and the advisory boards of several startups. I have been involved
in organizing many conferences, small and large, including the recent
WhereCamp5280 in Denver, and was one of the leaders of the Denver bid for
FOSS4G 2010, and we will re-bid for 2011. I believe I am good at helping
organizations take a strategic view of where they want to go. I am from the
UK originally but have lived in the US for the past 15 years, and have had
global roles at both the large software companies I worked at, and have
traveled extensively in those roles, so I feel I have a good view of
geospatial users and markets around the world. From my experience working on
various boards, I think it is important to include people with a diverse
range of backgrounds and experience.

Tyler asked where people would like to see OSGeo in five years, and I would
answer somewhat differently to many of those who have made pretty detailed
responses. I would like to see that the number of organizations using open
source geospatial software has grown dramatically over the next five years,
and I would like to see a much larger ecosystem of companies providing
solutions using open source geospatial software, and helping fund continued
development. I believe it would be good for the geospatial industry as a
whole to see greater competition, and I think that open source solutions are
now mature enough that they can provide a much greater challenge to
established closed source solutions than they have in the past. In order to
do that we need to get additional people with commercial as well as
technical experience engaged in OSGeo, and I would help with that as a board
member. We need to also do this in a way that respects the spirit of the
community, but I believe we can do that (partly by looking to larger open
source communities than our own for lessons on how they have grown).

Thank you for your consideration, and please feel free to email me if you
have any questions.


-- 
Peter Batty - President, Spatial Networking
W: +1 303 339 0957  M: +1 720 346 3954
Blog: http://geothought.blogspot.com
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