[Geo4All] GeoAmbassador– Professor Charlie Schweik

[Antoni Pérez Navarro]

GGA! Great GeoAmbassador!

Congratulations Charlie!

 

De: GeoForAll [mailto:geoforall-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] En nom de Suchith
Anand
Enviat: dissabte, 2 de desembre de 2017 15:27
Per a: discuss at lists.osgeo.org; geoforall at lists.osgeo.org
Tema: [Geo4All] GeoAmbassador– Professor Charlie Schweik

 

Dear colleagues,

On behalf of GeoForAll community , it is my great pleasure to honour Charles
(Charlie) Schweik  as our GeoAmbassador. Charlie Schweik is a full professor
at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA in a joint appointment
between the Department of Environmental Conservation and the School of
Public Policy. 

Charlie has an undergraduate degree in Computer Science, a Masters of Public
Administration from Syracuse University, and a PhD in Public Policy from
Indiana University. At UMass, since 1999 he’s offered regularly an
introduction to Geographic Information Systems to undergraduate and graduate
students in natural resource conservation majors, as well as to students in
UMass’ Masters of Public Policy and Administration program. Schweik began
his research career studying landcover change -- usually deforestation or
reforestation -- using GIS and Landsat satellite-based remote sensing, and
connecting that to the social science study of natural resource “commons”
governance and management. But beginning around the year 1998, his computer
science background converged with this interest in commons and common
property regimes, when he first heard the phrases “Free/Libre” or “Open
Source” software. Since then, much of his research has focused on the study
of Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) as a form of Internet-based
collective action. In 2012, he published his book, Internet Success: A Study
of Open Source Software Commons (MIT Press) [1], which included a
statistical analysis of over 170,000 open source software projects, looking
for factors that lead projects either to ongoing collaboration or project
abandonment. One of the chapters in the book studied qualitatively six OSGeo
projects, investigating similarities and differences in the way they are
governed and managed. Among other things, he learned from this study that
open source software collaboration is not about the establishment of large
development teams, but are usually made up of smaller teams of two to three
developers with an interest or a “user-centered need” for that software. He
also discovered that more than half of the successful ongoing collaborations
in his dataset gained a developer from another continent [2]. Since
completing that work, Schweik continues to expand his interest in the
potential and promise of global Internet-based collaboration in the
development of open source scientific hardware and in open educational
resources (OER).  

 

Most recently, he gave a GeoForAll webinar [3] where he emphasized the
untapped potential of the GeoForAll network in online collaboration in Free
and Open Source for Geospatial research and education, and is actively
trying to encourage educators and geospatial scientists at GeoForAll labs to
find areas of mutual need and interest, to start cross-lab collaborations in
FOSS4G-related research or educational content development. GeoForAll lab
members with an interest in collaborating with another lab on educational
material, make your interests known by entering a record in the OSGeo wiki
table at https://tinyurl.com/GFA-collaborations  or contacting Charlie
directly at cschweik at umass.edu <mailto:cschweik at umass.edu>  

GeoForAll is committed to work towards the vision of the United Nations 2030
Agenda for Sustainable Development for building a better world for everyone.
Open Education is the simple and powerful idea that the world’s knowledge is
a public good and that technology in general and the internet in particular
provide an extraordinary opportunity for everyone to share, use, and reuse
knowledge. Openness is key for true empowerment and sustainability. 

We are proud to honor Charlie as our GeoAmbassador and we are extremely
grateful for his contributions to GeoForAll.

Best wishes, 


Suchith 


[1] e-book freely available for download at
https://works.bepress.com/charles_schweik/29/ 
[2] https://www.thecommonsjournal.org/articles/10.18352/ijc.397/ 
[3] https://youtu.be/dVCDME7cxUA 

 
 
 
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