[OSGeo-Discuss] Nomination of Pekka Sarkola

[Ari Jolma]

I would like to nominate Pekka as an OSGeo Charter Member.

Name: Pekka Sarkola
Contact email: pekka.sarkola at gispo.fi

Pekka has been working with geospatial since mid-90's. He is a well known
person in the Finnish GIS community. Pekka participated in FOSS4G in
Denver in September 2011, and he has since been working actively to expand
and build the Finnish OSGeo community. Pekka would be the third Finnish
OSGeo charter member.

Pekka was the main force behind the Finnish application for FOSS4G 2013 
(which was
received well but lost in the final vote against Nottingham). Pekka has 
organised
two FOSS4G meetings in Finland [1]. He is an active member in the 
Finnish chapters of
OpenKnowledge Foundation and OpenStreetMap. He was responsible of
the Open Geodata stream in the first OKFestival in Helsinki 2012 [2]. 
Pekka is a
member of the organizing committee of OGRS 2014 [3].

Pekka's company, Gispo Oy, [4] helps customers to benefit from FOSS4G 
software
and open geospatial datasets. Pekka writes regularly a blog in Finnish 
[5] and
tweets in English and Finnish [6]. Pekka is also guest lecturer in the Aalto
University.

Pekka is a great advocate for FOSS4G software in Finland and overseas. He is
eager to help many users to benefit from open source and open data 
solutions in
various industries. His professionalism and business knowledge is 
beneficial to the
OSGeo community.

[1] http://www.gispo.fi/alpo-2013
[2] http://okfestival.org/open-geodata/
[3] http://2014.ogrs-community.org/index.html
[4] http://www.gispo.fi/
[5] http://paikkatieto.com/
[6] https://twitter.com/posiki

Best regards,

Ari Jolma
OSGeo Charter Member
Emeritus OSGeo Board Member