[Ica-osgeo-labs] "Geo4All - MapStory Challenge" - FOSS4G 2016 Student Competitions

Thu Oct 1 03:00:06 PDT 2015

Dear all,

Following the discussion I realized that the problem is who gives what
instead of how much the award matters to the winner.

I don't think it is the money. I don't agree with this kind of award. For
me, the title is more than enough for the winner. What it matters is who
gives the award. How much he (the organization in this case) counts.

In ancient Olympic games the award was a small olive branch put on top of
the head of the winner. Its value was zero because you could get as many
branches as you wanted from the surround (millions of olive branches around
any place in Greece) but you couldn't get THE olive branch of the games.
This is what it counts.

In my opinion, getting "the gold medal of ." is what it should count and not
if we have more or less money for an award. So, we can have more than one
awards depending on what software was used by the student(s). It is up to us
to decide. All these Foundations are great and the students will be honored
to be awarded by them for their excellent work.

Wishes

Nikos

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------

Dr. Nikos Lambrinos

Associate Professor

Dept. of Primary Education

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki

Greece, GR-54124

Tel. +30 2310 991201

Email: labrinos at eled.auth.gr

Web pages: http://labrinos.webpages.auth.gr/digital_geography/

                    http://www.digital-earth.edu.gr/

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: ica-osgeo-labs-bounces at lists.osgeo.org
[mailto:ica-osgeo-labs-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Venkatesh
Raghavan
Sent: Thursday, October 01, 2015 12:03 PM
To: ICA OSGeo Labs list
Subject: Re: [Ica-osgeo-labs] "Geo4All - MapStory Challenge" - FOSS4G 2016
Student Competitions

Dear All,

In a conference hosted by and also the cash award being 
provided by the OSGeo Foundation, I see no wrong in 
considering innovative use and/or value addition to  the
OSGeo software stack as one of the criteria for final 
selection for student awards. 

The other criteria (in case of software
development related presentation) would be that
the presented software is made available under an
appropriate Open Source License (after all the award is
being made at a FOSS4G conference). I think that is what Jeff 
and Maxi are trying to say too.

"OSGeo Best Oral Presentation Student Award" and 
"OSGeo Best Oral Poster Student Award" at FOSS4G-2015
were selected based on shortlisting of student presentations
based on evaluation by Academic session chairs. The final 
selection was made by the Awards Committee (comprising 
most of the session chairs (some who had their return flights 
earlier could not be at the meeting) and Geo4All advisory
board members who were present at the conference.  One
of the criteria applied in the final selection was as stated
in the previous paragraph "innovative use and/or value addition
to OSGeo software stack".

The "FOSS4G Seoul Best Oral Presentation Student Award" and
"FOSS4G Seoul Best Poster Presentation Award" with cash award
provided by the Seoul LoC, also followed the same procedure/criteria.
One of the presentation was more related to Open Hardware coupled 
with a widely used Open Source package not under the OSGeo umbrella
 (as yet).

If there is to be a "MapStory Challenge" in future, it can be considered
as a separate award sponsored by folks connected to MapStory Foundation, 
just like GeoCat b.v. sponsored "FOSS4G Developer Award" that was presented
at
FOSS4G-2015. GeoCat also formulated it's own selection procedure
in consultation with the Seoul LoC.

Best

Venka

On 10/1/2015 5:01 PM, Massimiliano Cannata wrote:

Dear all
I agree with Jeff principles.
During the osgwo event we should shomehow foster osgeo. Everywhere.
I do not want to enter into porocedural details or rules of prize
assignment.
I just would like to see clearly incetivayed the use of osgeo software.
Then also someone who make amzing things mixing proprietary and open source
non-osgeo could win the award.

But to reinforce osgeo brand and to help osgeo projects i would like this
principle clearly promoted.

Then i undrstand geo4all is not osgeo and it can do whatever it believes is
better and osgeo do not have any autoritative role to drive this.

Maxi
Il 01/Ott/2015 06:57, "Suchith Anand"
<mailto:Suchith.Anand at nottingham.ac.uk> <Suchith.Anand at nottingham.ac.uk> ha
scritto:

Dimitris ,  Very good points  and i hope Jeff will come with more
clarifications/answers to these queries.

Best wishes,

Suchith

________________________________________
From: ica-osgeo-labs-bounces at lists.osgeo.org [
ica-osgeo-labs-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] on behalf of Dimitris Kotzinos [
kotzino at gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 01, 2015 12:34 AM
To: ica-osgeo-labs at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: Re: [Ica-osgeo-labs] "Geo4All - MapStory Challenge" - FOSS4G
2016      Student Competitions

Hi Jeff, all

before taking a final position on your - admittedly - strong note on the
Geo4All awards, I would like to ask some clarifications and offer some
comments hoping that this will facilitate the discussion and avoid
making it a conflict. Let me say first that I understand the reasoning
saying that an award funded by OSGEO, in the main OSGEO event, should
focus on OSGEO software.
So some requests for clarifications first:
- how do you see the award selection working: students are allowed to
submit when they are using at a 100% OSGEO projects? What happens when
for a specific student task an OSGEO project is not available? What
happens when the student add his/hers own source code to do something
(which could be in the form of a tool or an external library)? Do we
talk about full projects or also about non-OSGEO libraries used in
student projects?
Personally I would understand more a position that says that the
projects should use substantially (by this I mean playing a crucial role
in the project) at least one OSGEO project.
- I was confused by your answer to Gert-Jan: if the LOC has full
authority, then the instructions apply only to the Geo4All community?
- do you see this as a decision to be made by the OSGEO President or the
Board or by the Geo4All community, which in principle includes also
people not related to OSGEO (since it is a joint OSGEO/ISPRS/ICA
initiative?
- why do you differentiate between the global and the regional FOSS4G?
Since now at the European and the NA FOSS4G are becoming equally big
with the international one (with their own limitations of course) I
cannot understand why you differentiate. At least from a Geo4All
perspective (but also from my perspective for OSGEO's future) I cannot
see the difference.

Some comments, if anyone is interested: from my academic (and thus maybe
limited or biased) perspective this is not a good way to advance. I
always try to get students to use the best tool they have for the job,
with one of the most important factors of choosing the best to be its
openness both in terms of software license but also (if relevant) in
protocols/standards and data used. So for me it would be at least weird
to tell them (important to note that we are teaching these students)
that excellence and quality and openness come after the OSGEO brand.
Also I think that most (I would even go as far as to say that all) of
our projects are of top quality and if a student is looking for a tool
to implement a project idea then they will be his/hers first choice.
Imposing a purity restriction actually gives a message that we are not
so confident on that.

Please take this as an effort to discuss this, as I said I understand
also the reasoning behind Jeff's message. I am not yet convinced that
these reasons supersede other principles and also provide more benefits
than the issues they raise.
My 2c and thanks for listening,

Best regards,
Dimitris
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