[OSGeo-Discuss] Candidate Statement for Nicolas Bozon

Sun Sep 25 23:15:15 PDT 2016

Dear OSGeo,

First of all, thank you for nominating and considering me as a potential
OSGeo director.
This is a great honor to take part to this election and to run along with
good and numerous candidates. Only 25% of us will get a sit this year,
exciting !
Charter Members, a real choice is given to you this time so please make use
of your votes ! I a writing this statement to tell you why you should
consider giving me one.
It is also available on the wiki [1], if you are more confortable with
reading long text in a web page rather than in your email client.

About me
---------------------------------------------
I am a cartographer in daylight hours, and a UI/UX designer in the night
time.
I have a deep interest into everything visual and love to create
(geo)graphics that may add value to open source technology.
I've came to open source GIS during my PhD back in 2006, while i was
looking for tools and libraries that i could fully control in order to
achieve my research goals.
It did not take long at that time to realize how relevant OSGeo was,
adapt/extend the software to my needs, attend my first FOSS4G, and then
just feel like at home in our community.
I've been using, designing and promoting open source technologies since
that time, alternating research and business experiences, and sometime make
them interact the good way :)
Please find more details about me on my OSGeo user page [2] and Linkedin
profile [3].

My vision
---------------------------------------------
Today, my passion and commitment towards the OSGeo Foundation have never
been stronger. Looking at our global growth and significant achievements in
term of technology, education and outreach activities, I am even more proud
to be part of such a lively, determined and clever community.
However, OSGeo has entered an important transition period and i believe it
needs to evolve now in order to strengthen its aura and adoption across the
broader geospatial community and industry. Of course OSGeo needs to be more
inclusive, not only about people, country or gender, but also about
software projects, collaborations and the numerous ways of doing open
source, open data and open knowledge.
I believe the Foundation especially needs to find a more appropriate
balance between the non-for-profit, academic and business approaches, but
also between individual and collective interest and way of thinking. It
must also avoid loosing time and energy with useless conflicts, baseless
rumors or low level politics. Implement change probably means taking more
risks, that's why we also need to be careful to protect our open culture
and principles at the same time.
Charter members also need to be empowered in a more effective way according
to me, and every meaningful initiative that meets our goals should be
encouraged and supported.
Enough about governance :) You understood that i am in favor of enhancing
our do-ocraty a bit, and why not mix it with some democratics flavors as we
grow.
Another very important point of my vision is that OSGeo must become more
visible and accessible through a very clear meassage and image, with a
stronger and modern identity.
Everything is in our hands to show the value of our work better, and that
would significantly help us to get the most out of our 501(c)(4) status
IMHO.

What you have done within the community in the past
---------------------------------------------
I am a Charter member since 2011 and a Marketing Committe Member since 2012.
I have already been nominated for the Board elections in 2012 [4].
I co-founded ZOO-Project [5] in late 2008 with the goal to provide an open
platform able to make OSGeo librairies communicate with each other. This
was achieved using a cross-project approach and by implementing WPS, which
i've been promoting worldwide along with co-founders since then.
Later on, I co-funded MapMint [6], the 100% service-oriented SDI, in order
to bring the full power of ZOO and MapServer to end users. Not only to
developers.
Most recently, i created mapskin [7], the visual language for geospatial.
This one provides scalable vector icons illustrating concepts and objects
of modern cartography in a clean iconic web font. Please help your self :)
I am also keen on participating in FOSS4G events organization and had the
great pleasure to help for FOSS4G-FR 2014 (program and web), FOSS4G-Asia
2014 (web/print), FOSS4G-Europe 2015 (web) and FOSS4G 2016 (program). I am
presently working on FOSS4G-Asia 2017 (LOC) and FOSS4G-Europe 2017 (LOC).

Any things that you would like to change or introduce
---------------------------------------------
I would like to improve OSGeo marketing and branding, and i suggest the Web
and Marketing Committees should merge now to do so.
Mark' Comm recently rebooted and is now fully conscious that our marketing
activities must go way beyond OSGeo-Live, including a stronger identity,
modern branding assets, up-to-dates exhibition packs, a much better web
presence, media coverage and more.
This new energy in the committee inspired me and i have subsequently
started to work on a new version of our logo. This work is presented in the
"OSGeo graphic style guide" [8], which i am planing to enrich and maintain
through regular releases. This document mainly helps to showcase the new
proposed logo for now, but it would likely provide detailed
rules/policies/specs for every aspect of the OSGeo brand usage and will
link to every official branding material lying in our svn. It will probably
move there soon btw, and i hope it can become a reference resource for
OSGeo marketing in near future.

What your interests are in terms of the board
-----------------------------------------------
The board of directors stated on a new strategic plan for OSGeo earlier
this year, which i believe goes into the right direction.
I would like to help implement it and get some of the things done,
especially on the marketing side wich has become a priority.

What role you would wish to fulfil on the board (if any)
-----------------------------------------------
I'd like to be the liaision with the Marketing Commitee, but i am fully
ready to take any other role and responsability if elected.

Special thanks
----------------------
I would like to thank Venkatesh Raghavan, Gérald Fenoy, Jeff McKenna and
the whole ZOO-Tribe for sharing ideas, passion and enthusiasm since 2008.
Special thanks also go to Markus Neteler for sharing his knowledge and for
his continuous support since 2009.

Best regards,

Nicolas

[1]
https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Election_2016_Candidate_Manifestos#Nicolas_Bozon
[2] https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Nbozon
[3] https://fr.linkedin.com/in/nbozon
[4] https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Board_Member_Nominations_2012#Nicolas_Bozon
[5] http://zoo-project.org
[6] http://mapmint.com
[7] http://mapsk.in/
[8] http://cartogenic.com/OSGeo-brand/guide/
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