On Jan 3, 2008 1:41 PM, P Kishor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Andrew, > > Perhaps you don't care too much about the relations between the open > source community and the "super elite and private VGI-dubbing" group > that met at Santa Barbara, but, if you do, please note that statements > like this are needlessly alienating. > > The meeting was well announced in various forums, including, I > believe, on Geowanking. The meeting was open to everyone who submitted > a position paper and application and got selected -- they had about > 35-40 folks from all over the spectrum -- private industry (ESRI, > Teleatlas, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo...), academia (too many to list), > open source (myself, Steve Coast...), government (well, at least US > govt. -- CIA, NGIA, CERL, Los Alamos National Labs), non-profit > (National Geographic...). I don't consider myself super elite nor > private, yet I was there. This was indeed the first, afaik, attempt by > academia to recognize this "phenomenon" that we, in the open source > community, have been living for the past many years. Nevertheless, it > just seems bad form to disabuse or denigrate this initiative in any > way whatsoever. Glib criticism is just that, nothing more.
I apologize, my query was mis-interpreted. It was semi-tongue-in-cheek jibing - at least in the specific words used. I was asking for an summary, but I will offer the alluded to, non-glib criticism. I did think of the workshop as fairly 'exclusive' as opposed to 'inclusive', being that it was limited in audience size and required approval by a committee (of 2?) to attend. This does in fact make it 'private'. I can understand reasons why this may be beneficial, at least to promote a quality meeting, but at least admit that was the reason. It was my own fault in submitting after the deadline and being told the workshop was full. And not super-elite? Look at the list of attendees you summarized, bunch of super-dupers in Geo world! :) (and not in a bad way). And every participant is affiliated with a large institution (yes, even Steve with OSM) > > Here is my summary of the two days of meeting. I hope this helps > capture what happened in that "VGI-dubbing" session -- > I really do appreciate the very comprehensive summary. So far, the endeavor had felt kind of like a "academia now deigns to acknowledge this emergent behavior" (as you inferred) and, at least speaking with in my experience in academia, seeks to affix a new label to it. Other articles/blogs have issued the same sentiment. Was there any discussion of the differences between "Volunteered" and "User-Generated" GI, because they are not the same thing, but there is meaning in the distinction. I hope and look forward to more open discussion and presentation around this topic and products from the workshop (and not just a $32 per digital copy article from GeoJournal. :) - We don't all belong to research institutes or large companies that have unlimited access. ) Anyways, I'll curtail my glibness in future criticisms ;) Andrew _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking
