Summary of initial responses after delivering the Open Letter about LiDAR standards

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Colleagues,

As many of you are aware in April 2015, i send out an email informing colleagues in Academia, Government and Industry who have interest in maintaining Open Standards in LiDAR to respond to the developments [1] and provide inputs.

Thank you for all of you who responded and supported our Open Letter [2] and as the next step of the process on 6th May 2015, i have emailed responsible contacts in the three organisations ASPRS (Stewart Walker), Esri (Jack Dangermond) ,  OGC (Mark Reichardt)  inviting all of them to respond and participate constructively for helping find a solution for this.

Dr. A. Stewart Walker (President of ASPRS) has  confirmed that he has received the e-mail and that ASPRS will discuss this  and will  respond formally in due course. They were holding their annual conference, IGTF 2015, in Tampa, Florida, earlier this month so i understand all key ASPRS people were there face to face to discuss this in detail and find a best way forward.

Mark E. Reichardt (President & CEO of the Open Geospatial Consortium)  has also replied positively and we welcome OGC’s support for geospatial interoperability and standards. Details at http://www.opengeospatial.org/blog/2224

Jack Dangermond (founder and President of Esri) has emailed me assuring thier commitment for interoperability and open standards and to support OGC to organize an open process leading to an open standard for storing LiDAR data [4]. I have replied thanking Jack for responding positively and  inviting thier participation for this. I also recieved email from Esri staff (Keith Ryden) that i replied suggesting that from now he be in direct contact with  Martin Isenburg (author of LASzip and LAStools) and Scott Simmons (OGC) to get thier feedbacks and inputs in  this discussions so that everyone can work together in the common objective of Open Standards in our discipline for the benifit of the wider geo community.

I thank Carl Reed for this sharing his years of experience ( i was not even born when he started his career!)  and wisdom on collaboration and building consensus and i take inspiration from his words. We all have to be patient, listen to all different viewpoints/perspectives and work together, step by step and always keep doors of communication  open so we can bring everyone together for building consensus.

We have achieved two important objectives so far:

1. We were able to educate the wider geo community on this issue and the importance of Open Standards and get strong support from all cross sections. It is a strong message to all that we are watching closely all developments and will take action as and when needed.

2. All key stakeholders are now committed to work together to find a solution for this.

It is important that discussions with all stakeholders start with open mind (OGC, OSGeo, ASPRS, Esri, other properitory GIS vendors, government organisations, LiDAR companies/users etc..) and i request that everyone put forward all the options for discussions and ideas for consensus. If you or your organisation wishes to contribute ideas/viewpoints for this discussion (even if you are not able to participate in the Boulder meeting, your views will help in finding the best solution) please email Scott Simmons (Executive Director, Standards, E-mail – ssimmons at opengeospatial.org ) your ideas/proposals on this before 25th May 2015, so that all proposals/ideas can be looked into and discussed  at the OGC Point Cloud ad-hoc meeting planned at next TC meetings in Boulder, USA (June 1st, 2015).

I now leave this in the safe hands of our OGC colleagues to guide the process forward and i request  everyone to work together step by step for this. It is important to be patient , listen to all viewpoints and slowly build consensus. I hope all stakeholders will work together in the common objective of Open Standards in LiDAR for the benifit of the wider geo community.

I thank all colleagues in GeoforAll, OSGeo, OGC, ASPRS, ISPRS, ICA and wider geocommunity  esp. Martin Isenburg, Cameron Shorter, Patrick Hogan whose efforts made this possible.I once again thank the wider geospatial community for thier attention and support on this important matter.

Best wishes,

Suchith

[1] http://www.osgeo.org/node/1518
[2] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/LIDAR_Format_Letter
[3] http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/board/2015-May/012814.html
[4] http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/discuss/2015-May/014222.html

Terms of Reference for the ICA Commission on Open Source Geospatial Technologies (2015-2019)

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Dear Colleagues,

As i informed you all earlier this year, that as part of the succession plan for the ICA Commission on Open Source Geospatial Technologies, it is my great pleasure that Dr Silvana Comboim (Universidade Federal de Paraná ,Brazil) has accepted my request and she will be nominated as the proposed new chair of the commission for 2015-2019. As per the ICA statutes the nomination of chair should be done through National member states only and i expect Brazil to support this nomination  at the next General Assembly at ICC 2015 and take this forward with the new Terms of Reference for the commission for the period 2015-2019.

It is very important that we have a strong leadership in place for this commission to support and expand all of the initiatives that was started and i have full confidence in Dr Silvana Comboim’s dedication and abilities to take us to higher levels. I had the pleasure to work closely with her over the last 4 years  and  she was the main person who took the initiative to establish the first OSGeo lab in South America at the Federal University of Parana, Brazil.  I believe that Silvana will be the right person to chair and lead this commission for the next term (2015-2019 ) and build upon the activities that we have done and take this to higher level.  I also had the opportunity to see the amazing work she and her colleagues are doing when i visited Brazil last year and i see the work she is doing in Brazil having a great momentum for our global activities of “Geo for All” mission.

I am closely working with Silvana for the smooth transition of the commission at ICC 2015 and would like to share the draft ToR for all colleagues

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Terms of Reference for the ICA Commission on Open Source Geospatial Technologies (2015-2019)

Chair : Dr. Silvana Comboim (Brazil)

1.    Continue maintaining website for Commission for the exchange of knowledge, news and information on the developments in  open source geospatial technologies.
2.    Contribute to  further instruments of ICA such as development of Open Education materials for educational and capacity building programmes
3.    Maintain a email discussion group and database of individuals working on, or with expertise in, open source GIS, open data to stimulate exchange of information.
4.    Produce a major publication on Open Source Geospatial Technologies (either a special issue of a refereed journal or a text book).
5.    Organize sessions/hands on workshops on Open Source GIS at future ICA conferences.
6.    Participate in / contribute to other workshops / seminars organized by representatives of other disciplines or by other ICA Commissions / Working Groups.
7.    Be the main contact in ICA for expanding successful flagship projects of this Commission, the ICA-OSGeo Labs and the Geo4All initiative and will contribute to its expansion in close ongoing consultancy with the ICA Executive Committee.
8.   Contribute to the International Map Year activities

====================================================================

Silvana has already made a great start  for this new term of the commission with  the ICC Pre-conference workshop on Spatial data infrastructures, standards, open source and open data for geospatial (SDI-Open 2015)  jointly organized by the ICA Commission on Geoinformation Infrastructures and Standards, the Commission on Open Source Geospatial Technologies and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) on 20 and 21 August 2014 at Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) in Rio de Janeiro  http://www.labgeolivre.ufpr.br/  and the Conference itself http://www.icc2015.org  will be great opportunity to strengthen the “Geo for All” initiative and to reinforce the key projects and research links for the future.

It had been my great pleasure  to get the opportunity to chair this commission in the last 4 years and i thank each and everyone of you for the support and help that you all provided for the initiatives we that have undertaken. Also special thanks to Prof. Thierry Badard (Canada) who was the cochair of this commission during this period for all his help provided to me.  I also thank the ICA President (Professor Georg Gartner) and the Executive Committee of the ICA for the strong support they all provided for all our activities including “Geo for All”  http://www.geoforall.org/  and i am sure they will continue their strong support to Silvana for the future to take this to higher levels.

I request all of you to support Silvana in her new role and provide her all help to expand our mission. Thanks again to you all for your help and support.

Best wishes,

Suchith Anand

Mapping response contributions for Nepal

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Our thoughts and prayers to all those affected by the terrible earthquake in Nepal. Hope our colleagues and families at Kathmandu University are fine.
Shashish and colleagues in Nepal – if you are reading this, please update and if you need to coordinate relief activities with the wider geocommunity  etc , please let us know
On behalf of Geo for All  http://www.geoforall.org/  ,i request you all to inform your colleagues and students to contribute in the crisis mapping action launched by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team. This will also help teach the students also the real essence of education and humanity and “sharing knowledge and expertise” to help each other in times of need.We thank our colleagues (esp. Maria Brovelli, Marco Minghini and Giovanna Venuti) and students at GEO Lab in Como (which is one of the GeoForAll Labs) for also organising a mapping  initiative to support the relief efforts.

Details at http://www.polo-como.polimi.it/news/dettaglio-della-news/article/165/helping-nepal-with-a-mapping-action-at-como-campus-967/

This is a request for all  those who would like to contribute to the mapping response, the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team has many  tasks set up at
http://tasks.hotosm.org
The scale of the efforts needed is huge, so more volunteers esp. with FOSS experience in automatic image classification and feature extraction and wish to contribute to the mapping response for the Nepal earthquake are needed .
There are many tasks that need to be accomplished at http://tasks.hotosm.org/http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/2015_Nepal_earthquake

If you already have OSM experience , it is better. If not you go through tutorial at http://mapgive.state.gov/learn-to-map/
Then, click on one of the HOT priority areas on their site and follow the on-screen instructions.
Anyone with FOSS experience in automatic image classification and feature extraction and wish to contribute to the mapping response for the Nepal earthquake, please contact Cristiano Giovando (Technical Project Manager ,Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team http://hot.openstreetmap.org ) Email- cristiano.giovando@hotosm.org  .

Thanks again for all of you for your support and help with this.

Suchith Anand

Open Letter for the need for Open Standards in LiDAR

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To all colleagues in Academia, Government and Industry who have interest in maintaining Open Standards:

On behalf of “Geo for All” community, http://www.geoforall.org , I would like to bring to your kind attention a significant development that can lead to undermining our principle for Open Geospatial Standards. I request you review the wikipage http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/LIDAR_Format_Letter   that is meant to represent our concern and allow for ongoing input and expression by our geospatial community.

We specifically thank Martin Isenburg (author of LASzip and LAStools, http://laszip.org and http://lastools.org) for  bringing this matter to our attention  and an email thread of our initial discussion of this subject that highlight the wider implication of this issuehttp://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/ica-osgeo-labs/2015-March/001225.html

We request all who wish to support this effort to protect Open Standards for Geospatial data to kindly add your name , email, affiliation details to the wikipage directly or email  Patrick Hogan (Email – patrick.hogan@nasa.gov ) with the subject heading “Support for Open Geo Standards” and the following fields (Name, Email, Affiliation ) and we will gladly add this to the wiki.

There is current interest by the OGC in pursuing point cloud encoding standards, including a member-initiated mechanism to extend LAS data with OGC-standard XML content. The OGC invites interested members who wish to  work on this effort to please contact Scott Simmons (Executive Director, Standards Program  E-mail : ssimmons@opengeospatial.org  ) to register their interest and discuss details.  OGC will also be holding an ad hoc session at our next Technical Committee meeting in Boulder, CO, USA in June 1st (more details will be send soon) to bring together all interested from all sectors (government, industry, academia) for this and plan next steps. We welcome feedback and input from Esri and invite them to join this effort to  support open LIDAR formats.

I thank you all again for your attention and support for this important matter.

Best wishes,

Suchith Anand
Founder, GeoForAll
http://www.geoforall.org

Invitation to NASA Europa Challenge 2015 – Solutions For a Sustainable World

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On behalf of “Geo for All”  http://www.geoforall.org    , i would like to welcome strong global participation for the third edition of the NASA Worldwind Europa challenge. The aim of this challenge is to inspire ideas for building great applications that serves the INSPIRE Directive and uses NASA’s open source virtual globe technology World Wind  http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/java/. Details of the challenge at http://eurochallenge.como.polimi.it/

This NASA challenge attracts the best minds  to develop their ideas covering  a broad range of domains from transportation to air quality to linked data.  The previous competition winners work is available at
http://eurochallenge.como.polimi.it/projects2013
http://eurochallenge.como.polimi.it/projects2014

We thank Professor Maria Brovelli (Politecnico di Milano, Italy) and Patrick Hogan (NASA) for their efforts for this initiative which adds great momentum to our efforts to promote openness in education and research worldwide.

We encourage you to inform this initiative to your students and have project teams for this. Already some excellent project ideas and teams have been formed for this year’s challenge and the deadline for project submissions is 1 July 2015. We will be awarding the winners at FOSS4G 2015- Europe “Open Innovation for Europe” conference at Como, Italy in July . Details at http://europe.foss4g.org/2015/

Also this year at FOSS4G-Europe , we will be also be announcing the winners of the “GeoForAll – Global Educator of the Year Award 2015” from the excellent list of nominations that we received at http://www.osgeo.org/node/1506

This is a great opportunity for us to thank all colleagues for their excellent contributions to Openness in Education principles in the Geo domain and to thank all educators worldwide who have made contributions to open education efforts and being good global citizens by helping spread the benefits of education to all.

By combining the potential of  Free and Open Source software, Open Standards, Open Data, Open Education Resources,  you all have made “Geo for All”   the PLATFORM for offering education opportunities to nurture and develop Open Minds in students globally for a better planet and better future for all…

Best wishes,

Suchith Anand
Founder, Geo for All
http://www.geoforall.org

Registration open for SDI-Open 2015

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Registration for the  pre-conference workshop on Spatial data infrastructures, standards, open source and open data for geospatial (SDI-Open 2015) jointly organized by the ICA Commission on Geoinformation Infrastructures and Standards, the Commission on Open Source Geospatial Technologies and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) on 20 and 21 August 2014 at Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) in Rio de Janeiro is now open at http://www.labgeolivre.ufpr.br/

Places are limited and available on a first come first served basis. Registration will be confirmed by e-mail

Any information please contact the local organisors:

Prof. Silvana Camboim ,  Head of ICA-OSGeo-ISPRS lab at Universidade Federal do Paraná (UFPR)  – silvanacamboim@gmail.com
Dr Julia Celia Mercedes Strauch – julia.strauch@ibge.gov.br

On behalf of the International Cartographic Association (ICA)  and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) , we look forward to welcome you to Rio.

 

Next steps for “Geo for All” expansion

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On behalf of “Geo for All” we are pleased to welcome you to FOSS4G India -2015 in Dehradun , India (June 9-10th, 2015). It is great pleasure that colleagues in our first OSGeo lab to be established in India at IIIT Hyderabad  have played key role for this. Details at http://lsi.iiit.ac.in/foss4g2015/

Keeping pace with our global geo education growth plans http://www.osgeo.org/node/1505 , it is important that in addition to the regional conferences , for example FOSS4G-Europe http://europe.foss4g.org/2015/  for our European labs; FOSS4G NA  https://2015.foss4g-na.org  for our North American labs, FOSS4G-Asia http://europe.foss4g.org/2015/  for our Asian labs etc., we need to have country specific FOSS4G conferences established as this helps us to arrange meetings of the national research labs coinciding with the FOSS4G national conferences  for accelerating research and teaching collaborations between our labs in each country. So i call upon all colleagues globally to start planning FOSS4G conferences in your country to meet local needs.

We will also arrange presentation for “Geo for All” at any conferences/events globally to share the Geo4All vision to all .Any one interested are welcome to download the presentation slides available at http://www.geoforall.org (link below the map) , translate etc and present it to spread the Open education message strongly to all universities. Combining the potential of  Free and Open Source software, Open Standards, Open Data, Open Education Resources, we are now offering education opportunities to nurture and develop Open Minds in students globally for a better planet and better future for all…

Best wishes,

Suchith

GeoForAll – Global Educator of the Year Award 2015

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On the occasion of Open Education Week 2015 http://www.openeducationweek.org/ , “Geo for All” community http://www.geoforall.org would to like to thank all educators worldwide who have made contributions to open education efforts and being good global citizens by helping spread the benefits of education to all.

We are very happy to announce the nominees for the GeoForAll – Global Educator of the Year Award 2015. This is an opportunity for us to thank our colleagues for their excellent contributions to Openness in Education principles in the Geo domain.

Congratulations to the following individuals or teams who received one or more nominations for the 2015 GeoForAll Global Educator of the Year Award

In no particular order, the nominees are:

INDIVIDUALS

– Daniel Baldwin, Costa Rica International Academy, Costa Rica, for his course on “Mapping the Mangroves” [1]

– Phil Davis, DelMar College, Texas, USA for his ongoing leadership and tireless efforts leading the creation of the GeoAcademy [2]

– Genovevea Laurente, Consultora Calixto, Uruguay and gvSIG Batovi for the course “Sistemas de Información Geográfica con uso de datos abiertos orientado a la educación,” or in English, “Geographic Information Systems for Education using Open Data” [3]

– Kurt Menke, Bird’s Eye View GIS, Alburquerque, NM, USA, for his Introduction to Open Source and Web Mapping course he developed for Central New Mexico Community College [4]

– Sterling Quinn, Pennsylvania State University, Pennsylvania, USA, for his course on “Open Web Mapping” [5]

– Giorgio Zamboni, Politecnico di Milano, Como campus, Italy for his “PoliCrowd: A Social Network App with NASA World Wind. [6]

TEAMS

– Environmental Information Centre GRID-Warsaw; UNEP/GRID Warsaw for their EduGIS Academy [7]

– Open Source Geospatial Laboratory team at ETH Zurich, Switzerland for their Interactive Web Maps course [8]

– Shashi Shekhar and Brent Hecht, Computer Science, University of Minnesota, USA for their Massive Open Online Course “From GPS and Google Maps to Spatial Computing” [9]

– Lluis Vicens (SIGTE,Spain), Toni Hernandez (SIGTE, Spain), Jeremy Morley (University of Nottingham,UK), Alberto Romeu (Prodevelop) and Jorge Sanz (Prodevelop) for their GIS Open Source Summer School at the University of Girona in Spain [10]

– Ricardo Olivira, Raphael Moreno – FOSS4G lab, University of Colorado, Denver USA for their PostgreSQL/PostGIS course materials [11]

– Raquel Sosa, Rosario Casanova and Jorge Franco, for their gvSIG Educa/Batovi effort in Uruguay [12]

– Kurt Menke – Brids Eye View, Nate Jennings Urbandale Spatial, Jon Van Hoesen Green Mtn College, Rick Smith Texas A&M, and Phil Davis, Delmar College (all in USA) for their GeoAcademy development efforts [13]

All of these individuals and teams should be celebrated for their efforts. Just being nominated is an honour.

The award committee now has the very difficult task of selecting the GeoForAll Educator of the Year out of this well deserving list of nominees. This year’s selections (possibly an individual and a team award) will be announced at the FOSS4G 2015- Europe “Open Innovation for Europe” conference at Como, Italy in July . Details at http://europe.foss4g.org/2015/

Congratulations again to all the nominees and we encourage you to list this nomination honour in your CVs.
Happy Open Education Week 2015 everyone…
Sincerely,

Prof. Charlie Schweik,

on behalf of the GeoForAll Educator Award Selection Committee:

Prof. Georg Gartner (President, ICA)

Jeff McKenna (President, OSGeo)

Chen Jun (President, ISPRS)

Prof. Maria Antonia Brovelli (Italy)

Dr. Xinyue Ye (USA)

Dr. Luciene Delazari (Brazil)

Dr. Tuong-Thuy Vu (Malaysia)

Prof. Venkatesh Raghavan (Japan/India)

Prof. Ivana Ivánová (Brazil)

Jeroen Ticheler (The Netherlands)

Dr. Serena Coetzee (South Africa)

Prof. Helena Mitasova (USA)

Anne Ghisla (Germany)

Patrick Hogan (USA)

Dr Suchith Anand (UK/India)

REFERENCES

[1] https://arabic.oercommons.org/EN/authoring/4247-mapping-the-mangroves-mwl/view

[2] https://foss4geo.wordpress.com/

[3] http://ipesvirtual.dfpd.edu.uy/course/category.php?id=81

[4] http://catalog.cnm.edu/

[5] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog585/

[6] http://geomobile.como.polimi.it/policrowd/

[7] http://edugis.pl/en/for-teachers/guide

[8] http://osgl.ethz.ch/osgl/Webmaps.html

[9] https://www.coursera.org/course/spatialcomputing

[10] http://www.sigte.udg.edu/summerschool2014/

[11] http://geospatial.ucdenver.edu/foss4g/training/tutorials

[12] https://www.fig.net/pub/monthly_articles/January_2013/gvsig_batovi_an_educational_gis.pdf

[13] https://foss4geo.wordpress.com

ICC Pre-conference workshop on Spatial data infrastructures, standards, open source and open data for geospatial (SDI-Open 2015)

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Screen Shot icaworkshop

Call for extended abstracts:
27th International Cartographic Conference
Pre-conference workshop on

Spatial data infrastructures, standards, open source and open data for geospatial (SDI-Open 2015)

jointly organized by the
Commission on Geoinformation Infrastructures and Standards, the Commission on Open Source Geospatial Technologies and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

Date: Thursday, 20 August and Friday, 21 August 2015
Venue: Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), Rio de Jaineiro, Brazil

The discovery, access, exchange and sharing of geographic information and services among stakeholders from different levels in the spatial data community is facilitated through a spatial data infrastructure (SDI). Standards are key for the quality and development of interoperable geographic information and geospatial software. The drive for access to geographic information has led to its publication as open data, i.e. freely available to everyone to use and republish as they wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control. According to a report by the United Nations Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM), the use of opensource solutions is likely to increase significantly in the future as a viable alternative to proprietary suppliers. Open source software for geospatial, geographic information standards and open data policies are therefore significant for SDI development and implementation. This workshop aims to record examples of current SDI practice with an aim to identify benefits and challenges to implementing free and open source software for geospatial, geographic information standards and open (spatial) data in an SDI.

SDI resarchers and practitioners are invited to submit extended abstracts of 1,000-1,500 words that describe SDI case studies where

  • open source software for geospatial is used in the technical implementation; and/or
  • geospatial standards are implemented; and/or
  • geographic information is accessible as open data.

The case studies shall include the following:

  • Background information about the SDI, including the relevant policies.
  • A description of how open source, standards and/or open data are implemented in the SDI.
  • An evaluation of the motivators, benefits, barriers and challenges concerning implementation of open source software, standards and/or open data.
  • Based on the evaluation, provide recommendations for improvements and/or further work.
  • Conclusions.

Extended abstracts have to be written in English. Contributions must be original and previously unpublished. Author guidelines are available here. Abstracts have to be submitted through the online submission system, available at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sdiopen2015. Abstracts will be reviewed by members of the organizing ICA Commissions. Upon acceptance, a revised abstract has to be submitted for inclusion in the workshop proceedings. At least one of the authors of an accepted abstract must register for the workshop and make an oral presentation at the workshop.

Accepted abstracts will be published in the online workshop proceedings with an ISBN number and will be openly archived on the ICA website under a Creative Commons Attribution License, which allows others to freely access, use, and share the work, with an acknowledgment of the work’s authorship and its initial publication in the online workshop proceedings. Authors of a selected number of high quality abstracts may be invited to submit an extended paper to a peer-reviewed journal.

Important dates

Important dates

Call for abstracts opens: 1 September 2014
Abstract submission: 2 March 2015
Notification of acceptance: 1 June 2015
Submission of revised abstracts: 6 July 2015
Full workshop registration payment for presenters: 6 July 2015
27th ICC 2015 Conference: 23-28 August 2015

If you have any questions, please contact Antony Cooper acooper@csir.co.za, Serena Coetzee serena.coetzee@up.ac.za, Suchith Anand Suchith.Anand@nottingham.ac.uk, Silvana Camboim silvanacamboim@gmail.com or Trevor Taylor ttaylor@opengeospatial.org.

“Geo for All” Open Education Award

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Colleagues,

Open Education Week (9-13 March 2015) is an annual opportunity to raise awareness about open education and its impact on teaching and learning worldwide. Open education encompasses resources, tools and practices that employ a framework of open sharing to improve educational access and effectiveness. Participation in all events and use of all resources are free and open to everyone.Details at http://www.openeducationweek.org/

Geo for All http://www.geoforall.org , will be strongly supporting and participating in the Open Education Week 2015 and build synergies with the training events, workshops, webinars etc planned.

We are pleased to welcome nominations for “Geo for All – Open Education Award 2015”. This is an opportunity for us to thank our colleagues for the greatest contributions to Open Education principles in the Geo domain. We greatly welcome nominations for educators who have created GIS courses from different languages and regions in developing and developed world. The nominator can send the summary details in English along with the nomination which will help the committee members to understand its impact.

We aim to announce the winner of the award during the Open Education Week 2015 and the winner will be awarded at the FOSS4G 2015- Europe “Open Innovation for Europe” conference at Como, Italy . Details at http://europe.foss4g.org/2015/ The winner will also be receiving a crystal momento from NASA ( see at http://eurochallenge.como.polimi.it/ ) titled “Geo for All Educator of the year”. We are grateful to Patrick Hogan (NASA) for this and also the excellent idea of this competition.

We will welcome nominations from everyone. Students, Colleagues or wider public can nominate any educator who they believe has contributed to Open Education in Geo domain .Anyone except those in Award Committee listed at at http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Geoforall_educatoroftheyear
are eligible for the award. Award Committee members are welcome to nominate any others work they know that deserve nomination though all members of the Award Committee themselves are not eligible .

Especially this is a great opportunity for students to nominate their Teachers and Educators for their great service to Open Education Principles building upon open software, open data, open standards, open educational resources etc for the benefit of the wider humanity. It can be short (Summer Schools, Trainer programs etc ) or long (full semester) courses both online and class based. Please feel free to pass this call to your students and colleagues.

Anyone who wish to nominate should send the details by email to Professor Charlie Schweik – Committee Chair [email – [log in to unmask] ] with the subject header – “Nomination for Geo for All – Open Education Award 2015”.

This should include the Course leader details with the url to the course details (or attachment with the course details). Ideally if there is website for the program it will be helpful. Please follow this template for nomination. (Thanks to Antoni Pérez Navarro for this)

* Course Title in English
* Language
* Original title
* Credits/Hours
* Number of editions
* Type: Virtual, face-to-face, blended
* Target (professionals, technical students, primary school level, secondary school level, university level ,embedded in a wider program, etc.)
* Average number of students per edition
* Goal (maximum 150 words): what is the goal of this course in its socio-economical context and why the course was created?
* Contents
* Links to course, materials, contents, etc.
* License type

All applications should be received by 28th Feb 2015 before 12:00 GMT to be considered for this award.

So please send your nominations to honour and recognise the educators who made it possible and will be an inspiration to others to build upon for future years. It will also acknowledge their excellent contributions to open knowledge and being good global citizens by helping spread the benefits of education to all. Central to “Geo for All” mission is the belief that knowledge is a public good and Open Principles in Education will provide great opportunities for everyone.

Best wishes,

Suchith