[wsfii-discuss] Open Geodata

Wed Aug 3 16:05:23 UTC 2005

Update on the Open Geodata track / workshop

* i have non-EU two people on Saul's list submitted to the
  'Oktoberfest of Openness' travel funding application.
  Frank Warmerdam probably cannot make it, still working on him.
  Chris Holmes (geoserver.sf.net) is super keen, also wants to connect
  with MySociety / TWFY type people if possible.

* His sponsors, The Open Planning Project in NYC, may be able to offer
  some more matched funding; i'm going in to talk to them soon.

* I had a personal offer of 500 euros from one of the directors of
  Mapbender, an Open Source GIS consultancy; possibly more from their
  corporation, if we need it.  

* Planning to support travel expenses for 3 EU-based openstreetmap
  people. Of these one is busy then, running a free software award in
  Norway, another has confirmed. Other potential people are FR/DE
  based so should be cheap to get here.

Activities:

I'm looking at a two-day hacking workshop on the 29th/30th which would
include the developers from free-map.org.uk and geowiki.co.uk , as
well as openstreetmap. No definite plan yet, because

- Have been in a chicken-and-egg situation re confirmed funding and
  financial management processes, so can't 'scope' the workshop yet.

- As we have the opportunity to bring people who work heavily on the
  industry open standards (the Open Geospatial Consortium) with the
  non-traditional-GIS free software hackers, this would be a good time
  to plan alignment and in particular work on an WFS/openstreetmap
  interop project.

- It would be nice to have a more 'public-facing' workshop along the
  lines of the 'Map Limehouse' one we held recently, and introduce
  people from other tracks to the practical mapping tools.

- Recently i've been thinking we could manage a 'policy sprint' too,
  on the Thurs or Fri afternoon, as a followup to the 'Public Access
  to Maps' session at the Society of Cartographers early Sept:
  http://www.mdx.ac.uk/www/gem/soc2005/program.htm
  We know a few people doing EU/UK consultancy work who are public
  sector information activists, and this would be a good mashup.  
  I imagine this would be of interest to the OSI funded community.

- I don't have a plan for speakers / panels on the main weekend.
  A panel on practical map hacking, and another on open geodata policy
  in PSI / civic information context probably makes sense.

I've been using a very-beta version of 'hiveminder', a collaborative
todo-list tagger/manager, to note down who i'm planning to invite or
hope to get together. I think hiveminder could be a very useful
platform for organising, escpecially for shorter-term, faster-loop
logistics than a wiki big picture, and need to get an ETA from its
developers on when we could all have access to it.

I have 'blocked out' September from the 6th til the start of WSFII and
am volunteering to be a fulltime gopher / nagger / phone person /
whatever's needed for the whole of that time, if needed or desired.

Questions:

- What will the process be for managing and distributing money?
- It makes sense for funding to go through OKFN; Rufus, are you set up
for that?
- For people whose travel we're funding, seems like more short-term work but
  less long-term expense and uncertainty to make bookings for people,
  rather then having them make their own bookings and invoicing us.
  As a long-time-attendee, first-time-organiser, i'd like to hear
  experience-based judgements about this.  
- Are we hoping to do communal evening meals during sprint week at
  Limehouse? I'd like this.

-jo