[Ica-osgeo-labs] Geo4All - Mentoring Program as a resolution for all our Pioneer101 labs

Mon Jul 20 08:50:19 PDT 2015

Dear all,

One of our colleagues shared an excellent idea of why not we have all the pioneer labs (first 101) to mentor atleast one new lab in their area of specialisation/country/region as a resolution for this year. I thought this is great and let us do this.

For example, if you are the only ICA-OSGeo lab in your country (for example University of Pretoria, South Africa), you are our national headquarters and you have BIG responsibility to mentor and enable that other universities/government organisations/schools get the opportunity to develop capacity in Geospatial Science.

If there are many labs in your country (like USA or UK ) , then you can mentor based on your specialisation. For example UCL in UK are the leaders in Volunteered GI research and they can think of ideas for mentoring other universities (both in UK and Internationally) in this theme . Similarly all other universities/research institutions/government organisations etc in our Pioneer list should mentor atleast one other new university/government/SMEs etc to establish their own GeoforAll lab.Esp. with our school teacher training in MapStory/QGIS/gvSIG etc this is very important.

At Nottingham, we did do this mentoring program before and found it very productive .The  mentoring program enabled us to bring in colleagues from other organisations to work closely  for short periods at Nottingham for building up  collaborations.

Some examples below:

·         The Integration of GIS, Open Source and Sustainability of the Environment - Dr Rossella Nocera (University of Molise, Italy) and  Dr Teresa Raventos (University of Leicester)

·         OpenGIS Capacity Building for Local Authorities - Dr Agata Ciolkosz-Styk and Pawel Kwiatkowski ((IGiK, Poland) and Fatima Manjra (Leicester City Council)

Both University of Molise (Italy) and IGIK (Poland) have since then expanded their research and teaching in Geospatial Science and now working for  establishing Open Source Geospatial Labs. .The mentoring program helped us to build long term research collaborations in Open Geospatial Science with the participating organisations.  These mentoring programs have been also useful to build long term research collaborations with organisations for H2020 bids etc.

Now it is the turn of University of Molise (Italy), IGIK (Poland) and others to mentor other labs in their country/region. Esp. with our school teacher training in MapStory/QGIS/gvSIG etc this is very important.

So i would like all our labs globally to start thinking of this mentoring idea to help other universities in your region/country to contact to enable mentoring opportunities and future collaborations. So we welcome ideas/inputs from all (including those who wish to establish Open Source Geospatial Labs) on how we can expand this mentoring idea globally.

Best wishes,

Suchith

________________________________________
From: ica-osgeo-labs-bounces at lists.osgeo.org [ica-osgeo-labs-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Suchith Anand [Suchith.Anand at nottingham.ac.uk]
Sent: Monday, July 20, 2015 11:01 AM
To: ica-osgeo-labs at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: [Ica-osgeo-labs] Geo4All - what can YOU DO THIS YEAR to move us        toward this vision?

Dear All,

Special thanks to Charlie, Helena, Phillip, Patrick, Maria and all we had excellent GeoforAll meetings in Como to discuss ideas for the future. Thanks to all who participated. I could only connect to for the first and last meetings as there was internet connection problems - maybe too many people trying to connect :)

One of the important decisions made was to  have all "labs" in the same table irrespective of they are university, government, industry, NGOs etc  and welcome Governments, Industry, SME's etc who support OSGeo's education mission to join us as "Partners" (in a separate table - i.e those who do not wish to setup a lab but just support ) . So we have global network of  Open Geospatial Science Research and Education ‘Labs’ and ‘Partners’ to expand more collaborations for the future. "Geo for All " is an evolutionary step for the OSGeo’s Education Committee . OSGeo Education Committee and GeoForAll are one and the same  http://www.osgeo.org/education

This  partnership and collaboration between OSGeo and ICA (and also now with ISPRS ) has been the main reason for the success. We now crossing 100+ ICA-OSGeo labs is the perfect answer to all those who laughed at the idea of having 5 labs established in 5 years  when we announced the ICA-OSGeo MoU . True, that we did not have any money or funding BUT we were able to bring in amazing people who joined forces for this mission.  We have to thank both the OSGeo Board and ICA Executive who in 2011 time backed the MoU idea and Arnulf and Georg who took leadership on this. This Inclusiveness and togetherness are fundamental for future growth as well and we should take steps to expand this.

We will have summary reports from Ela (School education) and Anne (Europe Bof) soon.

Anne is now bit busy and has kindly appointed Peter Mooney (Ireland) as the new cochair for Europe with Maria. On behalf of the community, we thank Anne Ghisla for all her hardwork and contributions for Geo4All over the years. I am sure Peter and Maria will build upon this.

I understand that Charlie had created the following 4 key questions[1] for discussing at Como meeting and i thought it was excellent idea that need to be shared with the wider community and get everyone's inputs

* Geo4All - What would you like to see Geo4All in 5 years -- 2020  -- in the context of educational collaboration?
* Geo4All  - What we need to do together to achieve this vision?
* Geo4All  - What can we do THIS YEAR to move forward?
* Geo4All - What can YOU DO THIS YEAR to move us toward this vision?

May i request all to reflect and email your ideas. Esp. we are interested to hear on "what can YOU DO THIS YEAR to move us toward this vision?"

I also thank Charlie for his efforts for all these meetings and Grant Sprint. In fact, Charlie has been doing background work for the NSF bids and GeoforAll meetings over the last 3 months atleast while he was at  Nottingham. I really hope that Grant sprints will become a key event at all FOSS4G conferences for colleagues to build ideas for future proposals (NSF ,  H2020 or any other). Fingers crossed for Maria's COST bid already submitted and if we get funded, we will ensure all our Europe lab heads will get funded for attending FOSS4G 2016 in Bonn.  We should have an excellent FOSS4G 2016 with all this momentum building up.

Best wishes,

Suchith

[1] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G_EU_Como_2015_BOF1

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