[FOSS4G2017] Another (possibly) fun idea

[Jeff McKenna]

On 2016-09-15 4:47 PM, Michael Terner wrote:
> We are /definitely/ open minded to fun, novel, interesting and
> compelling additions to the program. Please keep the ideas coming. A
> couple of notes:
>
>  1. I'll take some credit for the "Iron Mapper" idea as I saw it at the
>     Utah Geographic Information Council show this year (and last) where
>     they call it "Iron Cartographer" and mentioned it to Guido. Very
>     interesting for me to learn that Kristen from Cornell had
>     independently seen it. I know UT has been doing it a long time, but
>     not sure if it predates 2012? The FOSS4G twist would be running it
>     on QGIS (as UT did it with ArcGIS).
>  2. Love a format for "Point / Counterpoint" on topics of interest. At
>     Bonn there were interesting back-to-back talks by Vlad Agofonkin and
>     Ivan Sanchez on vector tiles and "what the trend means" that had the
>     same effect: two bright minds with different perspectives (although
>     there was no back-and-forth).
>  3. One other idea that someone suggested to me in Bonn (and I'm
>     forgetting the name of the person) was reviving performance
>     benchmark challenges. I believe they said that MapServer and
>     GeoServer used to be lined up next to one another to see relative
>     performance in a formal setting. Would some of this nature still be
>     relevant in todays ecosystem? What software tools would be tested?
>     What performance metrics?


Please see my earlier message today, where I reference the 'WMS 
Shootout' exercise that I ran many years at early FOSS4G's - that is 
what that person was trying to explain to you in Bonn :)  I used it as 
an example, earlier today, of how we need more fun and interesting talks 
(talks is a bad word here, ha, for what I mean), a little outside of the 
box.  Shootout exercises (benchmarking) are always relevant, it is 
getting teams involved and managing it from beginning to end, that is 
very time consuming (I think one year I managed 9 teams, including the 
Esri dev team, for the FOSS4G shootout), it could actually be my 
fulltime job doing that ha, hence why it stopped (when the person doing 
it for free steps down, often things grind to a halt in this community, 
and then everyone realizes hey wow that person must have been doing 
something ha)  :)

>
> We will make sure these are brought into the program committee discussion...

Hope the program committee can also start to speak openly here with 
their own visions, so we can all share and build.  Is Andy Anderson (I 
got the name of the program committee chair from page 8 of the proposal) 
a member of this mailing list?  Who else is on the program committee, do 
they need volunteers?  (I'm not volunteering, I am trying to get 
committees to speak up and share their needs and ideas)  What timelines 
do they have in mind?  Great to put this in writing so we can help, give 
opinions as to what could likely work or not.

>
> Thanks again..
no problem, we're all happy to share and help.

-jeff