[Ica-osgeo-labs] Ideas/Inputs for expanding "Geo for All" to School education and more collaborations with Industry, Government etc

[Suchith Anand]

Dear All,

The agenda and timings for the various GeoforAll meetings planned at  FOSS4G-Europe Como next week are now available at [1]. Thanks to Charlie for taking lead on this and Helena for getting our lab list updated.

The Agenda is very packed and covers all key topics. We are hoping to have telemeeting facility so those  who are not at Como can connect remotely to the meeting. The second BOF on Friday, will be  discussing GeoForAll expansion to schools and teacher training is important and timely. I am sure we will make good progress on this with the momentum that we are creating.

There are currently 8  members that are outside academia (government, industry, NGO) in our lab list wiki table .Our AB is discussing ideas on how we engage more with Industry, Government etc for the future. It is good to discuss and decide how we want to proceed.

Do we want to exclude all these 8 organisations who all have contributed for  "Geo for All" just because they are from government/industry etc OR is this a great opportunity to think of ideas of how we can engage more with Governments, Industry etc and get them more involved in "Geo for All" [2] . The key essence of ICA-OSGeo MoU was to  developing on a global basis collaboration opportunities for academia, industry and government organisations in open source GIS software and data and we should enable that NOT create artificial barriers.

One simple solution is  putting all Government/Industry/NGO etc in a separate table as "Geo for All" -Government, Industry, NGO Partners" and this will enable more government, Industry etc to join and support our mission. Only academic/university/school  labs will be allowed to use ICA-OSGeo-ISPRS title. The applications from those interested to join as supporters/partners from Industry, Government etc will have to be through the various regional chairs as with universities/colleages/schools .

"Geo for All" -Government, Industry, NGO Partners

* French Space Agency CNES  [Government]
* IGN- France  [Government]
* Direccion Nacional de Topografia - MTOP       Montevideo      Uruguay [Government]
* GeoBolivia-Vice-presidency of the State       La Paz  Bolivia  [Government]
* National Authority for Remote Sensing & Space Sciences         Egypt [Government]
* Environmental Science for Social Change (ESSC) [NGO]
* ISRIC - World Soil Information Foundation       Wageningen      The Netherlands [NGO]
* Birds Eye View GIS     USA [Industry]

Also one thing that i noticed  while looking through the labs lists, is the cross fertilisation of activities from universities/industry happening. For example, the Open Source Geospatial Laboratory at ETH Zurich [3] is linked with  SourcePole [4]  and hopefully this will inspire more university labs to expand collaborations with industry and also help their students to create more startups in the future. I was looking at OSGeo UK Chapter and there are many SMEs in the UK doing training [5] etc in this and we need to think of ways to engage with them not just in UK but globally.

As more and more government organisations, local authorities rapidly move to QGIS and other Open source solutions for enhanced efficiency and lower costs , one of the disadvantages till now  had been lack of support services and an ecosystem at the local level which is in fact the BIGGEST OPPORTUNITY for SMEs and startups to fill in and expand OSGeo ecosystem.  There should be a strong ecosystem (universities, local government, SMEs etc)  to enable create conditions  for  many small RedHat [6] opportunities  to be created in Open Geospatial ecosystem worldwide  , so that there will be lot of jobs creation as well as innovation opportunities.

So i have requested all AB members to provide their ideas /suggestions on this , so that Charlie, Helena and others can use the info. in our discussions at Como to help us find the best way forward.

Best wishes,

Suchith

[1] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G_Europe_2015_GeoForAll_Agenda
[2]  http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/ica-osgeo-labs/2015-July/001846.html
[3] http://osgl.ethz.ch/osgl/index.html
[4] http://www.sourcepole.com
[5]  http://www.osgeo.org/uk/training_providers
[6]   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat



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