Program topics & CFP outreach

[Rob Emanuele]

Hey everyone,

I wanted to seed some discussion about the program content by asking the following questions:

1) Taking a look at the topics in the call for papers, is there any topics that are missing from that list but that you'd want to see at the conference? For example, I'm hoping that we get a good number of submissions on aerial imagery processing.

2) For each of the topics, either on the CFP or not, does anyone have good leads on mailing lists/IRC channels/etc that would be good places to let know about the CFP, so that we can try to get as many proposals for that topic as possible? For example, "Using FOSS4G with OpenStreetMap" would be helped by some outreach on the OpenStreetMap "talk" mailing list. Are there other ideas on how to get good submissions about these topics? (e.g. personal emails to people who should submit)

The program is at the core of the conference, and in order to build a good program, we need good raw material. That raw material is submissions. The more submissions we have, the better submissions we have, and the more diverse submissions we have, the more quality raw material we have to build up a great program. So let's all help to make that happen!

Here's the list of topics in the CFP, for reference:

Developing FOSS4G

 - New developments in FOSS4G

 - Emerging technologies

 - Distributed geoprocessing

 - Mobile applications

 - UI/UX Design (User Interface/User Experience)

 - Design patterns and best practices for spatial

 - Developing solutions for mobile devices

 - Open hardware.

Using FOSS4G

 - Using FOSS4G for humanitarian efforts

 - Use cases for FOSS4G

 - FOSS4G solutions for specific domains, such as remote sensing, drone/balloon/kite based imaging, climate change analysis, water resources management, disaster response/recovery, and citizen science data collection/dissemination, elevation, LiDAR, or something we forgot to mention

 - Using FOSS4G with OpenStreetMap

Government Use of FOSS4G

 - Using Open Standards and serving Open Data

 - Open source for the infrastructure

 - Case studies in adoption of FOSS4G in government environments

 - Metadata creation and maintenance

All Things Data

 - New or underused open geospatial datasets

 - Data collection techniques

 - Crowdsourcing , citizen science, and crowdsourcing

 - Collaboration with open data - techniques on modification and sharing

 - Using open data

 - Ethics of privacy and fair usage of data

 - Big Data techniques and technologies

 - Data Science

 - Data Visualization

Internet of Things

 - Processing sensor data

 - Machine to machine (M2M) applications

 - Embedded systems

Community

 - What is our community currently, and how is the community evolving?

 - New community success stories

 - Licensing and other legal issues

 - Diversity in the FOSS4G community

Education and Research

 - Research results enabled by FOSS4G

 - Use of FOSS4G and open geospatial data in education

Thanks,

Rob

[scit...@redhat.com]

From a letter I wrote to Andrea and Rob:

Todd Barr and I would like to help with the all things data track but I would like to expand it a bit to include other tech. 

For example in the tech track I would like a session on containers/docker, on Object datastores like Ceph, and some other topics that would really help geo people. My microservices talk at FOSS4GE was very well attended and generated a lot of interest. 

With Red Hat in Raleigh I should be able to get some really interesting FOSS talks about technology that is not typically introduced to the Geo crowd. I promise to make the people talk about FOSS projects not the Red Hat products (unless people would like to hear about them). I could also get some very interesting workshops organized. 

If people are interested I can start hitting up Red Hat people for the talks. Let me know what other tech you are interested in hearing about. 

Can I help co-chair the track? I am sure Todd would help as well.

Thanks

Steve 

[Rob Emanuele]

Hy Steven,

I really like the idea of introducing technologies to the FOSS4G community in this way, by presenting on them at a geo-aimed gathering where they might not traditionally have a place. Highlighting the usefulness of how these type of technologies can help geo people is good, even if the talks are more about the general tech themselves.

Certainly hitting up Red Hat folk for talks is a great idea. The more submissions that we have of this type, the more easily a track can be formed.

One thing I want to do is not paint ourselves into a corner by setting up definitive tracks before the all the submissions are in. We have more rooms than last year's FOSS4G NA, which gives some leeway based on how many submissions we get, but it's also a hard optimization problem to choose and schedule all the talks to try and derive the best program out of the submissions available. So I'm hesitant to commit to specific tracks, more then the guideline tracks we have as part of the submission system. That being said, I hope we have enough submissions for a "other tech" track, even if that track represents more of a theme then an actual dedicated room.

What does co-chair mean to you? I'm not familiar with track co-chairs, so I'm not sure what that would entail. One idea that I've heard is that someone would MC the room for a track, which I think is a great idea. This would of course depend on there being a dedicated track-room-day for those talks, which as I said I'm cautious to commit to this early in the game.

One way to go about it that I see is:

 - Encourage talk submissions by Red Hat and other folk on open source tech that would fit into this category.

 - Tag the talks, either by commenting on them in the submission system, or emailing here, that you think fall into this potential track.

 - Help talk through what the potential track would look like on the mailing list here.

 - If there's enough submissions that get voted in by the program voting process, then the theme could somehow be explicitly stated or highlighted at the conference.

 - If there's enough submissions that get voted in AND the scheduling is such that it makes sense to group them in a room, then we might ask you to MC the room for us.

 - In either of the two cases, I would want to recognize the time and effort you took to bringing that content to the program in some way.

What are people's thoughts on that sketch of potential "track chairs" or "theme chairs"? I'm very open to thinking through other ways these ideas can be executed.

Thanks,

Rob

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[scit...@redhat.com]

Bump