[Foss4g2013] presentation selection [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]
Volker Mische
volker.mische at gmail.com
Thu May 23 04:02:56 PDT 2013
Hi Maxi,
sending back the results to the authors is really a lot of work. There
might be abstracts which are e.g. hardly understandable English. You
will just drop those without actually assign any relevance to them.
The time is of the LOC is really limited and making the selection
already takes hours (at least it was the case in 2009). Heaving even
more overhead would be to much.
Though perhaps it would make sense to have a chance to join the
selection process. So people who like to help out and to a thorough
review can do that.
Cheers,
Volker
On 05/23/2013 12:14 PM, Massimiliano Cannata wrote:
> Hi,
> I agree that votes are not a guarantee of real interest.
> Suppose you work for a large company that submit an abstract, you will
> easily have 100 votes of all the employees but this does not mean all of
> them will go to the conference and that the vote was "driven".
>
> At the same time, I like open and clear evaluation criteria, this avoid
> (or at least limit) the acceptance of talk by "friendship", that also I
> believe occur.
> Something like evaluation rating:
> 100 points maximum alssigned:
> - 40 for voting rank
> - 20 for foss4g project relevance
> - 20 fro.... etc.
>
> All the evaluation should then be sent back to the authors.
>
> I Also would like to have some "inspiring" talk from people "outside"
> (not only well know and great talker, than I like more content respect
> to shows) to better understand: what others do? How do they see OSGeo?
> What next? etc.
> And I would like to see rotation in successive FOSS4G as this is the
> conference for the community, rather then for the novels to open source
> that may have more opportunities to enter in contact with open source in
> local events organized by local chapters... so I would like to see
> CONTENT, NEWS, VISION rather then SHOWS and APPEAL.
>
> Of course, this is only my 2 cents... ;-)
>
> Maxi
>
>
>
> On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 11:58 AM, Volker Mische <volker.mische at gmail.com
> <mailto:volker.mische at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Hi Bart,
>
> I didn't want to be fierce, but explaining my experience. I especially
> felt like replying as you gave me a reality check quite often on topics
> where I had a completely different view in the past.
>
> My problem with the community voting is, does it really reflect what the
> community wants? I'm not saying the community is too stupid to know what
> they really one and someone else needs to decide what's best. I think
> the problem is the open voting. It's easy to get an bias in there. The
> people that actually vote is a small subset of the people that will be
> at the conference, but the conference should please the whole audience.
>
> I for example prefer developer centric talks. I don't care much about
> talks that are about "I've used this and that open source technology to
> do x and y" or about INSPIRE. Though there are probably quite a few
> people from institutions that don't yet use an open source stack or want
> to learn how to leverage open source when they need to meet the INSPIRE
> goals. It would be valuable to have such presentations. This is what the
> LOC is for, they can make the call to include those as well.
>
> Another example which is a bit artificial, it's about popular
> presenters. Let's take Paul Ramsey as an example, he's one of the best
> speakers I've ever been to at conferences. If he would submit 10 talks,
> probably all of them would get voted by the community (being it due to
> great abstracts or to know that Paul is presenting). But of course you
> don't want to have one person doing to many talks.
>
> And finally the problem of people trying to abuse the public vote (or
> have friends that try it). You can filter those out sometimes, but would
> you then publish the filtered results or the raw data?
>
> Though I think it's good to have this discussion. These thoughts have
> previously only in my brain and never written down. So it hopefully
> helps for future conferences to improve the process.
>
> Cheers,
> Volker
>
>
> On 05/23/2013 06:51 AM, Bart van den Eijnden 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 <mailto: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
> <mailto:foss4g2013-bounces at lists.osgeo.org>
> [foss4g2013-bounces at lists.osgeo.org
> <mailto:foss4g2013-bounces at lists.osgeo.org>] On Behalf Of Volker
> Mische [volker.mische at gmail.com <mailto:volker.mische at gmail.com>]
> >> Sent: Thursday, 23 May 2013 1:04 AM
> >> To: Bart van den Eijnden
> >> Cc: foss4g2013 at lists.osgeo.org
> <mailto:foss4g2013 at lists.osgeo.org>; <conference_dev at lists.osgeo.org
> <mailto: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>
> <mailto: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>
> <mailto: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 <mailto:Foss4g2013 at lists.osgeo.org>
> >>> http://lists.osgeo.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foss4g2013
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Foss4g2013 mailing list
> >> Foss4g2013 at lists.osgeo.org <mailto:Foss4g2013 at lists.osgeo.org>
> >> http://lists.osgeo.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foss4g2013
>
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>
>
>
> --
> *Massimiliano Cannata*
>
> Professore SUPSI in ingegneria Geomatica
>
> Responsabile settore Geomatica
>
>
> Istituto scienze della Terra
>
> Dipartimento ambiente costruzione e design
>
> Scuola universitaria professionale della Svizzera italiana
>
> Campus Trevano, CH - 6952 Canobbio
>
> Tel. +41 (0)58 666 62 14____
>
> Fax +41 (0)58 666 62 09____
>
> massimiliano.cannata at supsi.ch <mailto:massimiliano.cannata at supsi.ch>
>
> _www.supsi.ch/ist <http://www.supsi.ch/ist>_
>
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