[OSGeo-Discuss] [Election 2014] Nomination for Thijs van Menen

[Jorge Gaspar Sanz Salinas]

Hi all,

I forward Bart van den Eijnden nomination for Thijs van Menen for the
OSGeo Charter Membership.

Best Regards
Jorge


-------- Mensaje original --------
Asunto: 	nomination for Thijs van Menen
Fecha: 	Mon, 21 Jul 2014 11:30:03 +0200
De: 	Bart van den Eijnden
Para: 	cro at osgeo.org
CC: 	Menen, Thijs van (CIV)

I’d like to nominate Thijs van Menen for OSGeo charter membership.

When I first started to work on a large open source geospatial project
in The Netherlands in 2002/2003, Thijs was part of the government agency
(Rijkswaterstaat) that did the tender for a geospatial infrastructure
based on open standards. Our open source proposal got chosen, and we
worked many many years on setting up the SDI and maintaining it. The
project was called GeoServices, and as with many things, the project was
unfortunately a bit ahead of its time.

Thijs is one of the few people at government agencies that truly
understands what open source is. He is very passionate about open source
software development, and a few years after the inception of the project
he led a team of consultants hired by the Ministry to work on the
maintenance of the software as well as on applications built on top of it.

He has also been a frequent attendant of FOSS4G, with attendance in
Victoria, Cape Town and Denver. Some of the Denver people might remember
Thijs by his frequent use of the phrase “Tik hem aan ouwe”. He was also
involved in the inception of the Dutch language chapter.

Through this nomination I’d also like to thank Thijs for everything he
did for open source geospatial in The Netherlands. His enthusiasm really
helped things move forward.