[OSGeo-Discuss] Board nomination for Charlie Schweik

[Ned Horning]

I nominate Charlie Schweik for a position on the OSGeo Board. Charlie
Schweik is chair of the OSGEO education committee and an effective
advocate for the use of open source geospatial software in academia. He
is an Associate Professor with a joint appointment shared between the
Department of Natural Resources Conservation and the Center for Public
Policy and Administration at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
He is also the Associate Director of the National Center for Digital
Government, and an affiliated researcher with the Science, Technology,
and Society Initiative at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

His research focuses on environmental management and policy,
public-sector information technology, and the intersection of those
domains. His recent peer-reviewed publications focus on free and open
source software and the social frameworks and institutions that drive
their development and use.
With his colleague Robert English, he has just completed a 5-year
National Science Foundation funded study on open source collaboration
resulting in a book manuscript entitled “Successful Internet
Collaboration: A Study of Open Source Software Commons” (forthcoming,
June 2012, MIT Press). One chapter in this book analyzes OSGeo as a case
study (thanks to interviews with OSGeo members a few years ago).
Charlie has regularly taught an Introduction to Spatial Technologies
course to undergraduate students using OSGeo-related technologies. He
also just completed teaching a course to high school teachers using QGIS.

It was through Charlie's hard work and persistence that OSGeo first
created a web-based educational content inventory system. He is now
trying to work with other OSGeo affiliated academics (especially Suchith
Anand at the University of Nottingham) to build a network of
OSGeo-affiliated academic institutions and move OSGeo education toward a
new derivative work system. He is particularly interested in focusing
some of this effort on how local governments might move toward or become
interested in open source geospatial technologies and believes it is
critical for OSGeo to promote affiliated projects more in the government
space.

Charlie's formal training and experience as a computer programmer with
academic interests in studying the open source movement and promoting
the use of open source geospatial tools makes him well qualified to be a
board member of OSGEO.