[Foss4g2013] presentation selection [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

[Bart van den Eijnden]

Given the fierce responses, I will think twice about ever making a suggestion on a selection process for FOSS4G again. Sorry to have spend my time on this.

Bart

Sent from my iPhone

On May 23, 2013, at 1:59 AM, Bruce Bannerman <B.Bannerman at bom.gov.au> wrote:

> Thanks Volker.
> 
> Agreed.
> 
> Can I suggest that if someone believes that they have a better process, that they volunteer for the LOC of the next international FOSS4G conference and try it then?
> 
> Bruce
> 
> ________________________________________
> From: foss4g2013-bounces at lists.osgeo.org [foss4g2013-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Volker Mische [volker.mische at gmail.com]
> Sent: Thursday, 23 May 2013 1:04 AM
> To: Bart van den Eijnden
> Cc: foss4g2013 at lists.osgeo.org; <conference_dev at lists.osgeo.org>; Barry Rowlingson
> Subject: Re: [Foss4g2013] presentation selection
> 
> Bart,
> 
> I second the approach that was used by the LOC. It's similar to what was
> done in 2009 (when I was part of it).
> 
> Barry described how they made the selection in detail. It is important
> that the way the decision was made is transparent, not the decisions
> themselves (it would take way to much to give a reason for every not
> accepted abstract).
> 
> The LOC should make the final call and normally it's pretty close to
> what the community voted for (at least that was the case in 2009).
> 
> Cheers,
>  Volker
> 
> 
> On 05/22/2013 04:58 PM, Bart van den Eijnden wrote:
>> Barry,
>> 
>> does this mean you don't have enough trust in the community voting that
>> they will filter out anything inappropriate?
>> 
>> I see this as an unnecessary and confusing step.
>> 
>> Best regards,
>> Bart
>> 
>> --
>> Bart van den Eijnden
>> OSGIS - http://osgis.nl
>> 
>> On May 22, 2013, at 4:50 PM, Barry Rowlingson
>> <b.rowlingson at lancaster.ac.uk <mailto:b.rowlingson at lancaster.ac.uk>> wrote:
>> 
>>> On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 2:49 PM, Bart van den Eijnden
>>> <bartvde at osgis.nl <mailto:bartvde at osgis.nl>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> But apparently the selection committee filtered out abstracts based
>>>> on the
>>>> words open and or free, which seems a weird and error-prone approach
>>>> to me.
>>> 
>>> We did *not* purely filter out based on words.
>>> 
>>> We looked at the title, short abstract, and long abstract. If from
>>> those items we could not see a  free/open-source, open-data, or
>>> geospatial angle, we *thought carefully* about whether that should be
>>> included in the conference.
>>> 
>>>> My second talk was about GeoExt and since I thought since everybody knows
>>>> GeoExt is about open source, I did not mention those words explicitly
>>>> in my
>>>> abstract.
>>> 
>>> Yes, we have enough expertise on the panel to know our open source
>>> packages. Anything we didn't know, we looked up. However we can't look
>>> up something omitted from an abstract...
>>> 
>>>> Someone had a great abstract on big data, but it wasn't selected
>>>> because it can be used with both open source software and closed source
>>>> software, and it's not about open data specifically.
>>> 
>>> An abstract that doesn't mention any open geospatial technology could
>>> well be about doing analysis in ArcGIS or Oracle Spatial. Its not the
>>> committee's job to second-guess the presenter or ask the presenter for
>>> clarification - the abstract is space enough to provide clarity and
>>> full details.
>>> 
>>>> My personal opinion is
>>>> that if the general public wants to see this talk, it should not
>>>> matter if
>>>> the abstract contains the words free or open.
>>> 
>>> Again, we did not filter on the words. We took the totality of the
>>> submission and checked appropriateness for the Free and Open Source
>>> for Geospatial Conference, amongst the other criteria.
>>> 
>>>> Also, if this is filtering would be done, it should be done *prior*
>>>> to the
>>>> community voting phase IMHO.
>>> 
>>> Personal opinion: there's no point - the outcome will be the same, it
>>> will just require a committee to review everything before and after
>>> the community voting. There were very few inappropriate submissions.
>>> 
>>>> Can the selection committee elaborate on the approach they used?
>>> 
>>> I think we've discussed this at great lengths on this and other
>>> mailing lists. Basically: First pass: include community vote top 100.
>>> Second pass: include committee vote top 100 (giving us ~130 included).
>>> Discuss, eliminate anything inappropriate. Next pass: include lower
>>> ranked community votes. Next: lower ranked committee votes. Check for
>>> multiple submissions, similarities with workshop sessions, and make a
>>> decision on near-duplicates (which may include rejections, choices, or
>>> mergers). Keep going until coffee runs out or all slots filled. We did
>>> not run out of coffee.
>>> 
>>> I think fuller details will be posted to the lessons learned/cookbook
>>> wiki pages.
>>> 
>>> Barry
>> 
>> 
>> 
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