[Ica-osgeo-labs] Key updates - ICA Commission on Open Source Geospatial Technologies

[Suchith Anand]

Dear Colleagues,

It gives me great pleasure  to inform you all the good news that as part of the succession plan for the ICA Commission on Open Source Geospatial Technologies, Dr Silvana Comboim (Universidade Federal de Paraná ,Brazil) will be nominated as the proposed new chair of the commission for 2015-2019. As per the ICA statutes the nomination of chair should be done through National member states only and i expect Brazil to support this nomination  at the next General Assembly at ICC 2015 and take this forward with the new Terms of Reference for the commission for the period 2015-2019.

It is very important that we have a strong leadership in place for this commission to support and expand all of the initiatives that was started and i have full confidence in Dr Silvana Comboim's dedication and abilities to take us to higher levels. I had the pleasure to work closely with her over the last 4 years  and  she was the main person who took the initiative to establish the first OSGeo lab in South America at the Federal University of Parana, Brazil.  I believe that Silvana will be the right person to chair and lead this commission for the next term (2015-2019 ) and build upon the activities that we have done and take this to higher level.  I also had the opportunity to see the amazing work she and her colleagues are doing when i visited Brazil in May 2014 and i see the work she is doing in Brazil having a great momentum for our global activities of "Geo for All" mission.

Silvana will also be leading the ICC Pre-conference workshop on Spatial data infrastructures, standards, open source and open data for geospatial (SDI-Open 2015) in Rio, 2015 and the Conference itself http://www.icc2015.org  will be great opportunity to strengthen the "Geo for All" initiative and to reinforce the key projects and research links for the future.

It had been my great pleasure  to get the opportunity to chair this commission in the last 4 years and i thank each and everyone of you for the support and help that you all provided for the initiatives we that have undertaken. Also special thanks to Prof. Thierry Badard (Canada) who was the cochair of this commission during this period for all his help provided to me.  I also thank the ICA President (Professor Georg Gartner) and the Executive Committee of the ICA for the strong support they all provided for all our activities including "Geo for All" and i am sure they will continue their strong support to Silvana for the future to take this to higher levels.

I will  be working closely with Silvana from now  for the smooth transition  of the commission at ICC 2015.  I request all of you to support Silvana in her new role and provide her all help to expand our mission. Thanks again to you all for your help and support.

Best wishes,

Suchith



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