Anselm, Good point - although I had to read through twice to thread it together. And I might be missing a second, deeper point about GIS insiders vs. FOSS4G outsiders... I'll read again to see if I can "get it". This is an important subject for me, professionally.
I agree about conferences and speakers. It's always bothered me that conferences charge the same fees for presenters when we are providing the entertainment - so to speak. I understand in academic conferences where everyone presents - everyone pays the fee or the conference doesn't fly. But I've presented at several conferences where the presenter-attendee ratio was more like 1:10. Sure, I get the benefit of feedback as a result of my presentation, but more often then not I just get a bunch of blank stares... At the bigger conferences, like the AAG, I'm usually presenting only to the other people who are presenting in my session. They just want to get up, do their dog-and-pony-show and get out the door. I think it would increase the quality and competitiveness of presentations in an accepted presentation meant reduced registration fees. Maybe that model doesn't work for academia. And commercial presentations should be viewed as a source of revenue. But quality FOSS presentations should be rewarded! -Eric On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 11:59 AM, Anselm Hook <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Now that foss4g is over - I did have one comment about it. > > As far as I was able to understand foss4g wanted to charge $600 dollars for > speakers to present. Maybe I misunderstood this? It just seems so bizarre > and so alien and such a speed-bump that it really didn't make any sense to > me. It was like a socialist take on open source - where everybody has to > carry equal weight. This is why I dropped my participation with prejudice - > apologies to the folks who wanted to see my talk. > > There is good work from the GIS open source enthusiasts - PostGIS > extensions, MapServer, OpenLayers - effectively from people who are now > financed by GIS companies and are now GIS insiders. Part of what makes this > innovation great is that it is open source at all - in a world where ESRI > dominates. > > But there's a problem in the open source GIS community. It is being > constantly innovated into by outsiders. It doesn't seem to innovate > outwards. And this means that often new work doesn't leverage old > expertise. I constantly watch new ideas struggle to find ways to manage > geometry and solve problems that have already been solved. > > Look at the list of recent innovations. Why didn't OSM come from inside the > GIS community? Why didn't tiling and tile caches come from within the GIS > community? Why do mapping solutions deal with temporal data so badly? Why > is transient and volatile ephemeral data so difficult to manage with > classical GIS solutions? Why do they deal with client side persistence and > real time streaming so badly? Why do strangled phrases like "volunteered > geographic information" get any airtime? Why does the average video game > toss around 100k polygons phong shaded lit polygons at 60 fps while most GIS > clients struggle to show even 10k lines at 1 fps? > > Projects like tonchidot, work in ambient computing and augmented reality > coming out of university research labs, or google, and random hacker teams - > and seem to in part be re-inventing the wheel. They have their own formats, > they seem to emerge full cloth with no history, they act as if nothing else > exists. Why aren't more crazy new ideas coming from (or supported in part > by) established players such as say MetaCarta or ESRI or um, even (although > perhaps not strictly fair because we've seen a fair degree of innovation > here) from Poly9 or Urban Mapping? > > Maybe I'm wrong here - it's hard to really see the whole landscape - does > the EarthMine team come from a GIS background for example? Maybe NASA > WorldWind is also a good example of something amazing that comes from the > 'inside'. > > Basically I'm trying to understand if people holding new ideas could afford > to fly to somewhere far away like South Africa, pay an entrance fee, and > help spark innovation and dialogue and get feedback with people who are > truly expert and could make their vision fly.... and if not then how to > suggest fixing it. > > In any case my recommendations for foss4g are, > > 1) Sponsorship to reduce costs overall. > > 2) Speakers should be discounted to foster new participation. > > - me > > > _______________________________________________ > Geowanking mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking > -- -=--=---=----=----=---=--=-=--=---=----=---=--=-=- Eric B. Wolf 720-209-6818 USGS Geographer Center of Excellence in GIScience PhD Student CU-Boulder - Geography _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking
