[Ica-osgeo-labs] Open call for volunteers to help with building and hosting GeoforAll website in OSGeo infrastructure

[Suchith Anand]

Colleagues,

I would like to call upon all of you , if you can help volunteer to build a website for "Geo for All" http://www.geoforall.org/  in OSGeo infrastructure

Key advantages:

1. We can ensure long term hosting and development as the initiative grows

2. We will be able to provide the whole $5k of our budget for student travel awards for FOSS4G- Seoul 2015

I am sure our University of Southampton colleagues will be happy to work with any interested volunteers to move the website from the current hosts (University of Southampton) to OSGeo infrastructure.

It will be great if we can have many volunteers so we can spread the efforts. I am willing to volunteer my time and efforts for provide content etc for this. Could you please let us all know if you are wlling to help  by 30th May 2015, so we can plan ideas. Thanks.

Best wishes,

Suchith

 
________________________________________
From: board-bounces at lists.osgeo.org [board-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Steven Feldman [shfeldman at gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 21, 2015 9:11 AM
To: Suchith Anand; OSGeo-Board
Subject: Re: [Board] [Ica-osgeo-labs] Reminder of meeting tomorrow

Suchith, Board

We should not be diverting money from the student travel budget to build a web site for Geo4All. Either use the OSGeo infrastructure or get volunteers to spin something up, with all of the universities involved there must be some people with the necessary skills who can do this, we should not be paying Southampton to do it

steven

From: Suchith Anand <Suchith.Anand at nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:Suchith.Anand at nottingham.ac.uk>>
Subject: Re: [Board] [Ica-osgeo-labs] Reminder of meeting tomorrow
Date: 21 May 2015 01:01:15 BST
To: Massimiliano Cannata <massimiliano.cannata at supsi.ch<mailto:massimiliano.cannata at supsi.ch>>
Cc: osgeo-board List <board at lists.osgeo.org<mailto:board at lists.osgeo.org>>, "ica-osgeo-labs at lists.osgeo.org<mailto:ica-osgeo-labs at lists.osgeo.org>" <ica-osgeo-labs at lists.osgeo.org<mailto:ica-osgeo-labs at lists.osgeo.org>>


Hi Massimiliano,

Thank you for your queries.

Yes, GeoforAll is 100 percent an OSGeo Education initiative (but supported by others like ICA, ISPRS through MoUs and we hope more like minded organisations who have interest in enabling Geospatial education and opportunities for all join us in the future).

Regarding your questions:

- Does a budget for Geo4All exists?

Yes, the only budget we have is the $5k allocation for ICA/OSGeo Labs Student Travel  in the OSGeo budget last year and this year. Last year budget [1] if i remember correctly we did not use it .
[1] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OSGeo_Budget_2014


- ISPRS, ICA and OSGeo how they support the initiative, apart from having signed the MoU?

For example in addition to the amazing support that both ICA and ISPRS has given which helped us expand to many universities globally , they have been contributing to student awards etc. For example for the Europa World Wind challenge 2015, both ICA and ISPRS are contributing student prizes http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/ica-osgeo-labs/2015-May/001531.html  I remember ICA gave student awards last year also for Europa challenge.

- Why Geo4All need a website hosted in Nottingham and is not using the OSGeo infrastructure, like the OSGeo committees (incubation, marketing, etc.)?

First of all, it is NOT hosted in Nottingham, it is developed and hosted by the University of Southampton. We had long , big discussions in Geofor all maillists to see who can help us with the website development and hosting . In fact, our first offer came from colleagues in Mexico but unfortunately even after nearly 1 year delay nothing happened and thankfully that time University of Southampton colleagues  stepped in and volunteered to develop a website for us free and i am very grateful for that.

If OSGeo intrstructure can be provided  and we can get volunteers for developing and maintaining our website , we will be very happy. The website is really key for us and we  need to make sure it is supported long term. For example, the open educational repository that we at University of Nottingham developed called ELOGeo, i wanted to transfer to OSGeo infrastructure when the project funding ended and i did send many emails but nothing happened. We do not want the same thing to happen to our website as we spend huge amounts of time and effort reaching this stage and hence we request support  for the website developments . As you can see from the links in my email there has been lot of discussions from the community on this and supporting our website developments is the top priority.

- How Geo4All differentiates from the educational committee? Shall we consider that committee dead and replaced by Geo4All?

GeoforAll is a key element of OSGeo Education initiative not replacing the educational committee . The biggest advantage of having GeoforAll initiative is that we have made OSGeo Education into a wider geocommunity initiative ( not just OSGeo but much wider geocommunity inititative in collaboration with other like minded organisations) and we need to take actions to expand this.

Please let me know if there are any other queries. Thanks.

Best wishes,

Suchith
_________________
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Steven






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