[Marketing] Request for funding for Early Career Researcher support for GISRUK 2023

[Nick Bearman]

Hello,

As Chair of OSGeo:UK, I am trying to develop greater links between 
OSGeo:UK and the academic community in the UK. I organised a very 
successful FOSS4G:UK Local 2022 
(https://uk.osgeo.org/foss4guk2022local/) with approximately 300 
attendees across the UK. We managed some engagement with the UK GIS 
academic community (two venues out of nine being hosting by universities 
and 16 respondents out of the 108 who responded to the survey 
identifying as students or academics). However, I think we can do more 
with the academic community in the UK, and I think they could be a great 
source of people and contributions to OSGeo (global and local) and open 
source projects more generally.

The annual Geographical Information Science Research UK (GISRUK) 
conference is happening in Glasgow, UK on 18th - 23rd April 2023 
(https://gisruk.org/gisruk-2023/) and strongly supports ECRs (Early 
Career Researchers). ECRs are typically masters students, PhD students 
or post-docs (prior to getting a permanent lectureship position, i.e. 
tenure). GISRUK run a series of workshops and sessions for ECRs and I 
would like OSGeo to sponsor one or more of these. Typically GISRUK 
attracts around 100-150 participants, and usually ~50 of these are ECRs.

I am asking for US$750 (~GBP£606) to support this. I would suggest we 
use this to sponsor an ECR evening session (e.g. pizza or similar). This 
usually takes place at the beginning of the conference,  to facilitate 
their networking and integration into the wider conference. Any surplus 
could also be used to support ECR scholarships, which would pay for the 
registration fee for any ECRs who do not have funding from their 
university to attend the conference.

I appreciate I am not being very specific yet, but I think there is 
scope for some negotiation with the GISRUK organisers. Attached is their 
'standard' information for sponsors, but I think we could probably get a 
stand, session sponsorship and maybe some scholarships with the $750.

In terms of support from the marketing committee, I already have a role 
up banner from the code-sprint (thanks Astrid!) and a few left over 
stickers and print outs from FOSS4G & FOSS4G:UK. I think some OSGeo:UK 
stickers would be good (OSGeo:UK can pay for those) and I am open to 
suggestions as to what else might be good. I suspect stickers would go 
down well with this audience.

For full openness, I am on the GISRUK National Steering Committee, with 
responsibility for ECRs (Business). We also have a ECR (Academic) rep, 
James Haworth. I am also Treasurer of the RGS-IBG GISc Research Group, 
who are contributing to the scholarships as well.

I hope this covers my request in enough detail. If you have any 
questions, please do ask!

Best wishes,
Nick.


-- 
Nick Bearman
+44 (0)7717745715 | @nickbearman:matrix.org
nick at geospatialtrainingsolutions.co.uk

Due to my own life/work balance, you may get emails from me outside of normal working hours. Please do not feel any pressure to respond outside of your own working pattern.
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