[Foss4g2013] [OSGeo-Conf] presentation selection [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

Wed May 22 22:36:02 PDT 2013

Let me end my current contribution with one last afterthought on this.

Ideally, as an open organisation that OsGeo aims to be, the results of the community vote should be open. 

Would any LOC feel comfortable opening up these results given the current selection process? I believe not.

Would any LOC feel comfortable with opening up this data if the selection process was just top 100 community combined with top 100 selection committee (in this case 130 out of 188 available slots), with only filtering out of duplicates allowed? I believe so.

That's my whole point.

Bart

Sent from my iPhone

On May 23, 2013, at 6:51 AM, Bart van den Eijnden <bartvde at osgis.nl> wrote:

> 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
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Foss4g2013 mailing list
>>> Foss4g2013 at lists.osgeo.org
>>> http://lists.osgeo.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foss4g2013
>> 
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