[Foss4g2008loc] PC's for FOSS4G

Tue Sep 2 08:33:55 EDT 2008

Goodday

Hiring would surely make life a lot easier, but if it was supposed to have been easy someone else would be doing it in some 1st world country.

We are currently caught in a circle of ongoing questions with only two options that is influenced by many mitigating circumstances and having multiple partners of funding providing input is surely not rendering the required decision any sooner.

To ad to this discussion I would like to suggest an alternative scenario, which will contribute to the growth of the GIS industry as well as contributing to the economical situation in South Africa. Why not set up an incubator centre with half the PC's for young aspiring GIS people that would like to do their own thing, but does not have the start up capital to do so. As part of the incubator process they are mentored (via the modern electronic medium of internet, etc). Funds raised over and above the operational cost of the incubator centre is donated to the GISSA education fund.

I am sure that the incubator would also benefit from large scale GIS deployment projects such as the Census and IEC activities in terms of feeding in data etc.

The major task I can foresee the incubator play is to provide regular hands on training courses in Open Source GIS towards empowering our GIS community to utilise all the resources to benefit our clients and eventually ourselves. Another focal point in Africa where training can take place.

Now, just before you hit the reply button with all the questions, remarks and well wishes for a better recovery in Tara, I want to highlight that certain institutions such as the CSIR has both an academical and commercial set up within one organisation and might be one of the entities that could offer such a service in terms of hosting it. I am sure even entities like the Innovation Hub, might be interested? What about multiple centres in the big commercial centres in the country? Would teachers not benefit from such courses and experience? Would my clients not be keen to invest in training instead of software? Would exposure not create a South African culture of development, improvement and empowerment?

I know the above will most likely require a massive debate, some serious discussions and negotiations. So did a lot of things that was worthwhile in the history of our country. Many of these were firsts in the world and is used as world models these days - would this model be one of them?

So the question remains:
Do we buy or do we hire, and if we buy, what do we do with the PC's?

Regards,Burnie Nawn  Tel. No. (011) 773 1682Cell No. 072 134 5352Fax No. 086 613 2741E-mail: jbnawn at hotmail.com 

Subject: RE: [Foss4g2008loc] PC's for FOSS4G Date: Tue, 2 Sep 2008 13:52:49 +0200From: Carrinm at iceeafrica.co.zaTo: foss4g2008loc at lists.osgeo.org

Hiring the computers will mean that the company comes in at the appointed time and removes the 100 machines.  Selling them means that they have to be packed and kept somewhere until taken by whoever is buying them, and someone has to take responsibility for making sure that all the money comes in.  Ideally, we would need to sell them before the conference so that people knew that they had to be removed on their departure or shortly thereafter.  

I’m concerned about the logistics involved and getting all the funds in, but this would be an option if we could be assured that we could sell most of them.  

Carrin 

From: foss4g2008loc-bounces at lists.osgeo.org [mailto:foss4g2008loc-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Russell HopeSent: 02 September 2008 01:02 PMTo: FOSS4G2008 local organising committee (foss4g2008loc at lists.osgeo.org)Subject: [Foss4g2008loc] PC's for FOSS4G 

Hello 

We must confirm a school to donate to before we take the option to buy – Security at schools is a big problem in Cape Town - 
Kanya have indicated that all Cape High schools have pc’s – I am not 100% sure – The problem is that the Geography student do not access to the pc’s
Most libraries have pc’s with free internet but there is no gis software loaded - GISSA WC have flagged this for attention after FOSS4G
What about the resale at conference prices? Giving preference to Educators – GISSA / OSGeo members  

Regards

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