[OSGeo-Discuss] Sol Katz Award Nomination procedure (was Nomination for Venkatesh Raghavan)

[Eli Adam]

On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 8:22 AM, Fawcett, David (MPCA)
<David.Fawcett at state.mn.us> wrote:
> I am completely with Howard on this.  +1

Same here, +1

http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Sol_Katz_Award#Process
In past years, it seemed that only the rather small selection
committee has known who did not win the Sol Katz award.  In fact, did
all nominees even know they were nominated?  (Presumably the winner
was contacted in advance to coordinate their presence at the award
ceremony and perhaps give them a slight notice to prepare something to
say.)

Eli

>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org [mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Howard Butler
> Sent: Tuesday, September 18, 2012 10:15 AM
> To: Richard Greenwood
> Cc: OSGeo Discussions
> Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Sol Katz Award Nomination procedure (was Nomination for Venkatesh Raghavan)
>
>
> On Sep 18, 2012, at 9:53 AM, Richard Greenwood <richard.greenwood at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I agree that this is the first year that nominations have been
>> publicly discussed and it is a departure from previous years. I
>> followed Jeff's lead when I nominated Chris.
>>
>> But hey, we're an open community, I think it's even in the name
>> somewhere. And spreading a little recognition around to hard working
>> members of our community surely doesn't hurt.
>
> I disagree. The history of the award has been a cloistered deliberation of private nominations. The award is not a political exercise, or at least it hasn't been to this point, and public nominations tip things toward the lobbying direction. Every open source contributor wouldn't mind an award in the field of excellence, and every contributor deserves a pat on the back or two.
>
> Open nominations opens up a more than few cans of worms:
>
> - I won't say some stuff about a person in a public nomination that I would in a private one. First off, I don't want to embarrass them, as some people are embarrassed by public fawning.
>
> - Not every activity and action needs to be billboarded. If you look at the list of past winners, a common trait they all share is they all have kept their heads down and done a lot for the community as whole without regard to recognition.
>
> - I might not want everyone to know who I'm nominating.
>
> - Are we voting on the award? Lobbying the committee? What does a public nomination achieve other than to provide a (biased) public attaboy? There are plenty of opportunities for those that do not have to be conflated with a nomination process.
>
> The award is selected by an exclusive group of individuals, and this act makes it an exclusive award. The Oscar or Peabody or Pulitzer of open source GIS is much more interesting than the People's Choice. Let's keep it that way.
>
> Howard
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