[Geodata] Themes and Direction from FOSS4G

[David William Bitner]

Greetings all,

I'm just now getting back to the grindstone after Victoria and wanted to
provide a summary of some of the discussions that took place as well as some
of the directions that I see these taking us.  I've tried to bring up things
that were brought up by others, but do note I am not trying to shy away from
my own editorializing.

The main Geodata Committee activities at FOSS4G were comprised by a standing
room only panel moderated by Schuyler along with Chris Holmes and myself on
the panel and Jo piping up from the back of the room and a more intimate,
but also more in depth BOF session which built on many of the themes which
were brought up during the panel.  Additional Geodata-ish activities could
be seen in the strong presentations and labs put on by the GeoNetwork folks
-- It was great for myself to really see what GeoNetwork is all about as I
had never really gotten into it before this.


Some of the issues that came up:
* metadata hosting
  -- formal long metadata
  -- simplified metadata
  -- why the snot aren't we leveraging GeoNetwork more
* actual data hosting
  -- people who would like to see data
  -- people who have data, but not the resources or business need to host
themselves well
* showcase software with data
  -- educational use
  -- people like to see *their* house
* Geodata licensing
  -- licensing of specific data
  -- licensing of formats

One of the trends that I saw harkens back to the lightning talk that Ed
McNierney gave at the opening plennary: are we trying to build a 3/4" drill
bit or are we trying to get a 3/4" hole.  I think we have spent a lot of
time trying to think about solutions to a problem that we haven't ever full
defined.

Some of the use cases that were brought up during the conference:
* Repository of base data sets that could be easily subset and sent to a
location in on a drive or dvd in an emergency (low/no bandwidth situations)
* Showcase foundation software (if this is a goal, we really need to make
GeoNetwork a major priority)
* Catalog to easily find data that is perhaps hosted elsewhere
* Datasets for educational use (Grass has done an awesome job here)
* Place to put data that nobody else has resources to host
* Place to put data that existing resources are inadequate for
* Place to reprocess data into value added products
* Resource to provide clarification and leadership on licensing issues

One thing that I would like to see us do is to more clearly define a single
mission statement.  Currently we have what I would describe as a set of four
objectives that address how we are going to do things, but nothing that
describes what it is that we are trying to accomplish and more importantly
perhaps why we are trying to accomplish them.  Once we have clearly defined
what our mission as a group is, I think that it will be easier to set up
infrastructure and direct volunteer efforts in ways that will further both
our mission as a group and the mission of OSGeo as a whole.

I'd like to hear what things that other folks took away from the
conference.  Also from those who were not able to make it to the conference
what $.02 do you have to add?  Are we on the right track?  Are we all
scattered off doing our own thing?

David
-- 
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David William Bitner
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