Analysing the downfall of FOSS4G 2012

The international FOSS4G 2012 conference, which was scheduled to be held in Beijing in Sept 2012, was cancelled. This has been a disappointing setback for our OSGeo community, and here I capture some of the key events which lead up to this cancellation, and with our hind site perspective, identify areas we can change to make future conferences more resilient and successful.
This conversation started on the OSGeo Conference email list, then moved to the FOSS4G 2012 Lessons Learned wiki page as ideas consolidated.
The following discussion ground rules applied:

• Avoid letting the discussion break into a witch hunt, or blame game. Remember that almost all people involved in FOSS4G 2012 were volunteers, giving of their precious time freely.
• Instead, identify an event or decision, discuss the implications of the event, and ideally follow up with some recommendations on what we can do in future. 

Host City Selection

Prior to 2012, OSGeo's Conference Committee had agreed to a 3 year rotation for the location of FOSS4G conferences, which went:

• Europe (2010)
• North America (2011)
• Rest of the world (2012)
• Europe ...

The bid process involves cities providing a light, 2 page, "Letter of Intent", followed by a comprehensive bid if the "Letter of Intent" was approved. However by Letter of Intent deadline for FOSS4G 2012 there were no Letters of Intent. The deadline was extended, and Letters of intent were received from Rome (Europe), Prague (Europe), Hanoi (Asia), and a late entry from Beijing (Asia).
This was summarised by OSGeo Conference chair,

What happened is that we did not receive any submissions before the initial deadline, and then we opened the bidding to all areas, and then we received 1 submission from the desired region and 2 from Europe, and then a second late submission from the desired region.

My opinion is that the stated desired region is in fact still the desired region, and that all OSGeo conference committee members should keep this information in their head as they vote. (meaning: all 4 letters are an option for this voting stage, but the preferred region is 'anywhere other than NA or Europe')

In the end, only Prague [Europe] and Beijing [desired region] submitted a full FOSS4G bid, and when it came to a final vote, the OSGeo Conference committee was split between a bid from a more experienced team in Prague, and following OSGeo's established rotation with Beijing. In retrospect, we should have put more emphasis on selecting the experienced FOSS4G team.
European and North American international FOSS4G events have traditionally attracted more delegates and sponsors, which makes these conferences:

1. More financially profitable
2. Less financially risky
3. Reach more people (although not necessarily reaching more regions)

As we move forward, we may wish to favour selection of committees and cities with prior experience of holding local or regional FOSS4G events before being awarded an international event.

Competing regional conferences

In 2011, major regional conferences started in both Europe and North America, which competed for international FOSS4G attendance, along with some FOSS4G conferences from the region. It was debated whether OSGeo should support and encourage these new regional conferences, knowing that they would have an impact on attendance at Beijing.
As explained in a post by the Chair of the OSGeo Board:

From all that I can tell, now FOSS4G Beijing will become a local conference with support from "OSGeo international". This and no more. It will not be the Global or World conference that FOSS4G was before because we will have a FOSS4G CEE and FOSS4G North America event (plus the regular local ones) in the same year. There is no chance at all that Beijing can attract the same vibrant global participation that we had at the last global FOSS4G conferences.

The question is not whether we will have a FOSS4G in Beijing or CEE or North America. From all that I can tell we will have them all. There is no reason (and probably no way) to stop the North American or CEE initiative or both. Instead it is great to see so much interest and momentum - and we would be stupid to stifle it.

The competing regional conferences are listed here and here.

Local Organising Committee experience

Lack of Professional Conference Organiser

The Local Organising Committee (LOC) had teamed with a Professional Conference Organiser (PCO), starting from the bidding for the FOSS4G 2011 conference. However, it seems that at some point the PCO stopped helping with FOSS4G. The LOC were then unsuccessful in trying to sign up a new PCO. This was a significant setback for FOSS4G 2011, as PCO's bring significant experience in running a conference. They have experience with local venues and business, and they manage many of the day-to-day tasks which takes workload off the LOC.
From what I can gather, the PCO were not contractually engaged with the PCO up front, which allowed them to disengage later. What are the lessons? The LOC should contractually engage with the PCO very early in the conference cycle, and OSGeo oversight should ensure this happens.

Loosing key LOC members

One of the key Chinese OSGeo community members, Professor Yu, passed away shortly after Beijing was awarded the conference. This was very unfortunate, both on a personal level, and organisation level.
Loss of key committee members is reasonably common (although usually people step down for various reasons, rather than pass away). For instance, a key FOSS4G-Sydney evangelist, who promoted the Sydney event at prior FOSS4G conferences, stepped back and didn't attend Sydney's FOSS4G 2009. The original FOSS4G-Devar 2011 chair had to stand down for personal reasons shortly after the bid was accepted. These examples highlight the need for organizing committees to have strength in depth, and in particular to have a backup plan if the conference chair has to step down. This was a question that was asked of the Nottingham FOSS4G 2013 contenders, who have two backups to the conference chair, as well as a committee with strength in depth overall.

Decision Making

A conference chair is asked to make many decisions related to the conference, and the majority of the time, there is no clear understanding about the benefits or downsides of each option. Usually the only sure thing is that not making a decision will be detrimental to the conference. Consequently, it is important for LOCs to become quick and efficient at analyzing possibilities and then making decisions.
From what I can gather, the Beijing LOC would have benefited from being more efficient in making decisions. For instance, in mid-November 2012 the OSGeo-Live community asked the LOC to commit to distributing OSGeo-Live DVDs at the Beijing conference. The LOC took almost 3 months to confirm they would support this. Other conferences usually provide such confirmation within a week, often within a day or two.
I suspect delays related to decisions would have contributed to schedule slipages. The lesson here is that LOC's should be structured and resourced such that they can make decisions efficiently. A prior conference chair extended this observation to note the importance of the conference chair:

[A key lesson is the] importance of an active LOC and even more importantly an active CHAIR. Committees don't move, they can't communicate, they can't move. People can, so an active CHAIR is the single critical ingredient. And the more that person in invested in both organizing and communicating the event, the better it will be.

Schedule slip

As the deadline for the FOSS4G conference approached, there was significant schedule slip on key milestones, such as the ability to accept conference papers. This was providing a visible indication of some of the other issues listed in this analysis.
I think the lesson here is quite simple. Make sure there is an appropriately resourced project manager responsible for managing the conference schedule. (This task is usually provided by a PCO).

OSGeo Oversight

A second issue is that although OSGeo had identified concerns with FOSS4G Beijing's progress reasonably early, intervention from OSGeo was late in coming. A prior FOSS4G chair noted:

We need to put harder stops in place to short circuit failure. If you don't have a call for workshops out by February, [serious questions are asked, such as should the conference be cancelled?]. If you don't have $30K in sponsorship in place by April, [serious questions]. If you don't have a call for papers out by May, [serious questions]. This [FOSS4G 2012 conference] dragged out longer than it should of because there were no hard stop points.

During the build up to FOSS4G Beijing, one of the key volunteers on OSGeo conference committee, who had previously been very active, was showing signs of burnout and was not contributing to his prior levels. This left a noticeable hole in the OSGeo conference committee which was not filled by another volunteer. The OSGeo Conference committee had previously provided checks on conferences, such as reviewing and approving the conference's budget and submitting to the OSGeo board for approval, however this didn't happen for the FOSS4G Beijing conference.
What are the lesson's here? It may be that the critical role of approving finances should be covered by a paid position, funded by profits of FOSS4G conferences. Something like this was considered as described under the No mentor section below.

Is Failure Acceptable?

There has been discussion over the level of OSGeo Oversight that should be applied to a LOC. An OSGeo board member noted:

It is still desirable to give the local organizers quite a bit of freedom and that we should accept that occasional failure is not a disaster.

Which a prior FOSS4G chair responded with:

On the contrary, I'd say that random failures are a disaster and will actually contribute to more failures. ...The success of a conference is tied to the perceived expectations. Throwing a conference is like throwing a party. Do you want to go to a lame party? No, you want to go to a rocking party. If PartyPete throws awesome parties every Thursday, you'll clear your schedule as next Thursday rolls around. If LameLou throws passable parties sometimes, and sometimes cancels them, you'll start going to PartyPete's instead. Consistency is very important.

The same thing will go double for sponsors: are you going to commit to early sponsorship and send a cheque to an event that was cancelled last year? Or will you hold on to your cheque until the last minute just in case? The uncertainty effect is going to make the financial situation of future conferences more precarious as sponsors and registrants hedge their bets until later in the calendar. This will only get worse if we embrace failure as an occasionally acceptable mode.

I'd argue that while it may be ok to experiment with some fringe elements of a FOSS4G program, occasional failure of the international FOSS4G conference should be considered unacceptable.

No mentor

A proposal was put to the OSGeo board, which was eventually approved, to have an experienced FOSS4G mentor support the Beijing Local Organising Committee. (A funded mentor was not provided to previous conferences). This proposal fell through, and although some prior FOSS4G chairs were approached (and others?), a replacement mentor was not found.
This left the Beijing FOSS4G LOC committee without some key expertise which could have been very valuable.
What is the lesson here? I think this was a good idea which fell through, and is worth pursuing again in future.

Communication

Language barrier

From what I understand, Beijing LOC were most comfortable speaking in Chinese, and had varying levels of experience with English. I observed that finding the right English words to support a conversation and convey important messages was a time consuming task, often involving decisions being made in Chinese, then translated to English. This communication overhead would have produced a significant workload on the LOC, who were already working on the difficult and time consuming task of running a FOSS4G conference.
I believe this communication gap also contributed to many of the other symptoms discussed here. Slow communication between the LOC and community would have:

• Contributed toward slow responses to community queries, hindering the international community contributing prior experience toward the LOC,
• Slowed decisions from the LOC resulting in schedule slip,
• Caused difficulties getting the quality control of the website correct,
• and reduced marketing and communication to potential international delegates.

Cultural Differences

I question whether cultural differences contributed to communication shortfalls. From my observations, it seems Chinese are more circumspect about sending public communication, often using face-to-face meetings, and waiting for review from a superior before making a public statement. This contrasts with open source communities I've observed, where many opinions are discussed publicly, both amongst senior and junior developers, until a rough consensus is reached.
The OSGeo board representative to FOSS4G 2011 noted:

For a while I attempted to play [the FOSS4G board representative] role ... Also, while I was nominally involved, in practice there was never any discussion on any mailing list I was on ...

To me, a lesson of the Beijing effort is that it is hard to be involved remotely if the LOC won't communicate by email/irc/etc. I presume all the discussions that did happen were done by private email or in person but I was left with no visibility or ability to assist.

Collective Knowledge

I believe our experience with this conference highlights how much of our collective FOSS4G knowledge is stored in volunteers' heads, and is passed between different events through our various communication channels. When we constrict information flow by introducing a language barrier, we have also constricted access to our knowledge on how to run a conference.
A few suggestions on ways to address this include:

1. Collect our conference running knowledge in a central source, that can be handed on without the high level of communication currently being used. In particular, I'm suggesting starting to collect our processes in a FOSS4G Cookbook or similar.
2. Set up a permanent FOSS4G coordinator role (one person, or an international PCO, or similar) who are responsible for coordinating conferences and personally remembering lessons learned between conferences. (Note the risk of this person resigning and loosing all collected knowledge)
3. Additionally, ensure key members in the LOC can communicate fluently with the rest of the OSGeo community. In most cases at the moment, this would mean speaking fluently in English.

Response to emails

There were a number of comments that I was privately CCed on which indicated that the international community were not receiving responses after emailing the LOC. Here are some examples:

As I've told you before it has been frustrating to me to not receive any feedback from the LOC on my offer to sponsor the event. I basically had the plan to come with my whole team (5 people now), but can't afford such investment considering the state the conference and participation levels are at now. In fact we have moved focus to the Nottingham event just after Beijing because it appears to be (1) better organized (but that may just appear like it due to the lack of communication from Beijing, (2) an audience that is of interest to [company name] and (3) cheaper / closer to home.

Another from the academic lead, who later stepped down:

... [regarding email responses] from two "important players" I have had no feedback, namely from the local organizers and from OSGeo.

I think the lesson here is that the LOC and PCO should be suitably motivated and resourced, and be provided with enough delegation to respond to all community queries promptly. Every query should be responded to within one working day, even if the response is "we will have an answer to you after the LOC meets next week".

Website out of date

A conference's website is the primary form of communication with potential delegates. For FOSS4G 2012, the website took an excessively long time to be developed and brought online, and then when it was brought online, it contained incorrect information and broken links (mainly cut and paste from the prior FOSS4G website). People were having significant issues with submitting papers and registering to attend.
The FOSS4G LOC had hired an external web developer to create the website, who had done a poor job of development. It seemed that there was a lack of quality control from both the web developer, and LOC. In the past, development of the website has either been managed by technically experienced developers (as was the case in 2009), or by the PCO.
The lesson here is that the website needs to be made a priority and suitably resourced. There is the potential for website management software to be passed on from one conference to the next. (We considered this option in 2009 but found the Open Source conference management software used by FOSS4G 2008 was not going to integrate easily with the software our PCO was using). It would be worth future FOSS4G conferences revisiting this question.

Minimal "buzz"

To a certain extent, a conference is successful because the LOC says it is going to be successful (and potential attendees and sponsors believe the statement). Presenters and sponsors attend the conference because they believe there will be lots of delegates, and delegates attend because they believe there will be lots of quality presenters and sponsors. And one of the most effective ways for everyone to be convinced of the conference's success is to create lots of "buzz". I.e., lots of press releases, articles, blogs, twitter discussion and more talking about how good the conference is going to be.
FOSS4G 2009 possibly went a little too far by putting out 41 press releases. However, FOSS4G Beijing could certainly have benefited from more "Buzz", as the OSGeo Board Chair noted:

on the website at http://2012.foss4g.org/ there is still no option for submitting abstracts although the submission has been opened - apparently without notice to any of the regular OSGeo channels. Workshops submission ends in two weeks.

No international speakers have been announced and there are only Chinese sponsors listed (although interest by regulars was documented as early as December 2012).

Engaging international organisers

Compared to prior international FOSS4G events, there was minimal international involvement in organising the FOSS4G event. Of particular concern was that the international academic track lead resigned, saying:

... I regret [the LOC] did not fully support the setup I proposed. Specifically, the LOC insists on using their own deadlines and reviewing and publication plan. Of course they have every right to do so, because it is in fact their conference...

There is a significant amount of work involved in organising a conference, and it is very valuable to share tasks with the international community. This has two key benefits:

• It allows the LOC to focus on the local issues (like sorting out the venue)
• It facilitates knowledge transfer between years, as roles like the Academic track lead are often coordinated by the same core people over a number of years.

So lesson here is look for opportunities to make use of the international community to coordinate specific areas of the conference.

Weekly meetings

Less than 3 months before FOSS4G 2012 was due, weekly meetings were started between volunteers from the international community and the LOC. I understand that the LOC were having meetings internally, but there was little visibility of them from the international community. The extra meetings facilitated transparency from the international community into the progress of the LOC, which in turn provided opportunities for the international community to volunteer to help. Eventually, with the help of these weekly meetings it was assessed that the level of effort required to bring the conference back on track, along with the likely outcome, resulted in a decision to cancel the conference.
In retrospect, these meetings should have started much earlier, ideally from the start of the conference planning a year or so earlier such that support from the international community could have made a better impact in the earlier stages. So lesson hear is start having periodic meetings from early in the planning cycle, and invite the international community to participate if you can.

Who wrote this analysis?

The telling of history is always influenced by the perspective of the narrator, and as such it is useful to know who the narrator was. This narration was by myself, Cameron Shorter. I was the chair of FOSS4G 2009, I'm a member of the OSGeo Conference Committee, and I voted for FOSS4G 2012 to be held in Beijing. I helped volunteers add Chinese translations to the OSGeo-Live DVD, and commit to handing the DVD out at FOSS4G Beijing. I later attended weekly meetings with FOSS4G Beijing's LOC and other international volunteers, until it was decided by the LOC that the conference should be cancelled.

OSGeo-Live 6.0 released

image: osgEarth - 3D Terrain Rendering on OSGeo-Live

Version 6.0 of the OSGeo-Live GIS software collection has been released, and will be officially launched at OSGIS 2012, the Open Source GIS conference in Nottingham, UK, 4-5 September 2012.

Release Highlights

Applications

All geospatial applications on the disc have been updated to their latest stable releases.

OpenJDK 7

All OSGeo-Live java applications have been successfully migrated to OpenJDK 7. Migration to OpenJDK was driven by Oracle's announcement that including Sun Java in Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu, or OSGeo-Live, is no longer allowed.

Translations

There has been significant activity translating OSGeo-Live documentation. Core documents are available in ten languages, and comprehensive translations are available for many other languages, including: Catalan (new), Chinese (new), English, French (new), German, Greek, Italian (new), Japanese, Korean (new), Polish, Spanish

Xubuntu 12.04 LTS

The Xubuntu base has been upgraded to 12.04 LTS (Long Term Support)

About OSGeo-Live

OSGeo-Live is a self-contained bootable DVD, USB flash drive and Virtual Machine based upon Ubuntu Linux that is pre-configured with a wide variety of robust open source geospatial software. The applications can be trialled without installing anything on your computer, simply by booting the computer from a DVD or USB drive, or running in a Virtual Machine environment. An accompanying collection of lightning presentations introduce the breadth and depth of Free and Open Source for Geospatial (FOSS4G).

OSGeo-Live includes:

• Fifty Quality Geospatial Open Source applications installed and pre-configured
• Free world maps and geodata
• One page overview and quick start guide for every application
• Overviews of key OGC standards
• Translations for multiple languages

Credits

Over 120 people have directly helped with OSGeo-Live packaging, documenting and translating, and thousands have been involved in building the packaged software. Packagers, documenters and translators include:

Activity Workshop, Agustín Dí­ez, Aikaterini Kapsampeli, Alan Boudreault, Alessandro Furieri, Alex Mandel, Alexandre Dube, Amy Gao, Andrea Antonello, Andrea Yanza, Angelos Tzotsos, Anna Muñoz, Anne Ghisla, Anton Patrushev, Argyros Argyridis, Assumpcio Termens, Astrid Emde, Barry Rowlingson, Benjamin Pross, Brian Hamlin, Bruno Binet, Cameron Shorter, Christophe Tufféry, Christos Iossifidis, Cristhian Pin, Dane Springmeyer, Daniel Kastl, David Mateos, Diego González, Dimitar Misev, Dominik Helle, Edgar Soldin, Eike Hinderk Jrrens, Eric Lemoine, Estela Llorente, Etienne Delay, Etienne Dube, Fran Boon, François Prunayre, Frank Gasdorf, Frank Warmerdam, Gavin Treadgold, Grald Fenoy, Hamish Bowman, Haruyuki Seki, Henry Addo, Hernan Olivera, Howard Butler, Hyeyeong Choe, Ian Turton, Jackie Ng, Jan Drewnak, Javier Sánchez, Jesús Gómez, Jim Klassen, Jing Wang, Jinsongdi Yu, Jody Garnett, Johan Van de Wauw, Jorge Arévalo, Jorge Sanz, José Antonio Canalejo, Judit Mays, Klokan Petr Pridal, Kristof Lange, Lance McKee, Lars Lingner, Luca Delucchi, Lucía Sanjaime, Mage Whopper, Manuel Grizonnet, Marc Torres, Marc-André Barbeau, Marco Curreli, Marco Puppin, Margherita Di Leo, Maria Vakalopoulou, Mario Andino, Mark Leslie, Massimo Di Stefano, Mauricio Miranda, Mauricio Pazos, Micha Silver, Michaël Michaud, Michael Owonibi, Mike Adair, Milena Nowotarska, Nacho Varela, Nathaniel V. Kelso, Ned Horning, Nobusuke Iwasaki, Oliver Tonnhofer, Òscar Fonts, Otto Dassau, Pasquale Di Donato, Paul Meems, Pedro-Juan Ferrer, Pirmin Kalberer, Raf Roset, Ricardo Pinho, Roald de Wit, Roberto Antolín, Roger Veciana, Ruth Schoenbuchner, Samuel Mesa, Sergio Baños, Simon Cropper, Simon Pigot, Stefan A. Tzeggai, Stefan Hansen, Stefan Steiniger, Stephan Meissl, Steve Lime, Thierry Badard, Thomas Baschetti, Thomas Gratier, Tom Kralidis, Toshikazu Seto, Trevor Wekel, Valenty González, Xianfeng Song, Yoichi Kayama, Zhengfan Lin

Sponsoring organisations

• The Open Source Geospatial Foundation, OSGeo, provides the hosting infrastructure for the OSGeo-Live project, and infrastructure for many of the software projects themselves. 
• LISAsoft provides sustaining resources and staff toward the management of the Live DVD.
• Information Center for the Environment (ICE) at the University of California, Davis provides hardware resources and development support to the OSGeo Live project.
• The DebianGIS and UbuntuGIS teams provide and quality-assure many of the core packages.

Joining the OSGeo board

I feel quite humbled and very honoured to have been voted onto the OSGeo Board. I'll do my best to live up to what I believe are the expectations of a board member.That is:

• I believe a board should listen to the community, work out what is the best for the community, then vote accordingly.
• We need to recognise the limited time constraints of (already busy) board members. If most decisions are deferred to a 9  member board, then we are wasting the potential of the 1000s of OSGeo volunteers, and 100s of OSGeo charter members. So primarily, a board's role should purely be a job of oversight, validating decisions made in OSGeo's various committees and projects.
• It is important to discuss ideas, but even more important is to follow through with solid actions, and I believe it is important to look for opportunities to enable volunteers to make a difference. It is important to work out ways to collate our volunteer efforts effectively and efficiently to make something much bigger than one person can do on their own. Effectively, the OSGeo Board should make way for OSGeo volunteers being more effective.
• It is good for a board to have a breadth of experience and opinions, but even more important is for a board to be able to work together effectively to make decisions. This means that at times, each board member will need to compromise, because a compromise is almost always better than making no decision at all.

All OSGeo-Live java applications now working with OpenJDK 7

100% of OSGeo-Live java applications are now running successfully using OpenJDK 7 in OSGeo-Live 6.0 beta releases.
This move to OpenJDK has been driven by Oracle's announcement that the "Operating System Distributor License for Sun Java has been retired", meaning that Sun Java is no longer allowed to be distributed in Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, or OSGeo-Live.
The good news is that OpenJDK, the fully Open Source implementation of java, has improved to the point where we have shown that all OSGeo-Live applications will run under OpenJDK 7. And by extension, we have shown it is feasible to incorporate these applications in linux distributions.
We have verified applications compile and quickstarts run as expected, and we have been impressed with what we have seen. However we have not done comprehensive testing of all functionality in each application. Nor have we tested performance or reliability. Users who wish to see a specific application deployed into production using OpenJDK should contact the project about whether more detailed testing has been completed.

About OSGeo-Live

OSGeo-Live is an XUbuntu based distribution of Geospatial Open Source Software, available via a Live DVD, Virtual Machine and USB. You can use OSGeo-Live to try a wide variety of open source geospatial software without installing anything.

Image Source:  http://spagettikoodi.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/java-duke-guitar.png

Australian National Environmental Information Infrastructure pilot

 LISAsoft has recently supported the Australian Bureau of Meteorology set up a National Environmental Information Infrastructure pilot.
The natural environment plays an important role in Australia’s economy and way of life. To manage it effectively, governments, industry and the community need comprehensive, trusted and timely environmental information to make sound environmental decisions. To support this need, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (the Bureau) is leading the National Plan for Environmental Information initiative that will deliver improved quality, coverage, usability and access to environmental information. As one element of the initiative LISAsoft has supported the Bureau in piloting parts of a National Environmental Information Infrastructure (NEII).  This pilot has demonstrated the process of modelling and publication of environmental information from atmosphere, ocean, land and water domains.

There are multiple challenges involved in achieving an effective infrastructure. First, the source data, which is continuously updated by multiple agencies, needs to be dynamically collated into aggregated datasets to facilitate macro analysis. This requires development and agreement upon standard data formats, processes and tools which source agencies can use to publish the source data. Once aggregated, the data requires distribution and publishing in a manner that can easily be accessed and manipulated by end users. This requires a robust and reliable publishing infrastructure, built upon standard interfaces, which can be used easily and efficiently by existing or provided tools. Furthermore, the infrastructure developed needs to be both feasible and sustainable. As such, the Bureau has selected a distributed design, based upon OGC standards based services and formats.
This early NEII pilot has focused on the development of standard information models, and a reference implementation of a source data node. LISAsoft has helped the Bureau by:

• Consulting on and documenting the NEII architecture design.
• Defining some of the information models required.
• Developing pilot implementations of an NEII node. The NEII node publishes data via a Web Feature Service (WFS) interface using the GeoServer spatial data server.  GeoServer has been the target of recent CSIRO development efforts to create a service capable of supporting the complexity of data models required for projects such as NEII.
• Configuring a web based catalogue which can be used to find datasets. This is based upon the Catalogue Service for the Web (CSW) interface, and implemented using the Open Source GeoNetwork application.
• Testing of the conformance of the services within the pilot.

To support the Bureau, LISAsoft has drawn upon years of relevant experience, including:

• Domain Modelling during international, OGC standards development testbeds
• Co-authoring a Domain Modelling Cookbook with CSIRO
• Testing conformance of Web Feature Services in both Australian Spatial Data Infrastructures as well as in OGC testbeds.
• Deploying, configuring and optimising GeoServer for multiple projects.

The NEII pilot has completed successfully and has validated the feasibility of the proposed design, and provided valuable feedback into the practicality of the approach and tools. These valuable lessons will be fed into the greater National Plan for Environmental Information initiative.

Calling for "OSGeo Advocate" profiles

Do you know a lot about aspects of Geospatial Open Source, and are prepared to stand up in public and talk about it? Then please consider adding your name to the "OSGeo Advocate" list.

Background:

With my role on the marketing committee, increased number of foss4g related conferences, and with the success of the OSGeo-Live DVD, I'm now regularly being asked to recommend speakers who can talk about OSGeo related topics. Arnulf, as chair of OSGeo, similarly reports being invited to present at more conferences than he can sustain. So the OSGeo Marketing committee has created a space to show off the breadth of experience amongst our OSGeo community, which at the same time will allow conference organisors find local OSGeo experts.
Is this something you can help with? If so, please register within the next month, before the end of July 2012, when we intend to officially launch.

Call for interest in OSGeo-Live 6.0

We are starting to build the 6.0 OSGeo-Live DVD which will be released in September 2012, ready for FOSS4G 2012 as well as many other spatial conferences. This upcoming version will be built upon the stable Xubuntu 12.04 Long Term Support (LTS) release. Documentation will be translated into eight languages, now also including Chinese and Catalan.

Any new applications?

We would like to hear from anyone wishing to add new projects to OSGeo-Live, anyone wishing to extend or add extra translations, or anyone who has ideas on how we should shape the upcoming release.

Key Priorities for next release

Package Updates

Migrate to Xubuntu 12.04 LTS

Update and test latest stable software releases

Migrating to OpenJDK

Due to Oracles changed license conditions for Sun-Java, Ubuntu users are now strongly encouraging to move to OpenJDK instead of Sun Java, due to both improvements in OpenJDK, and difficult licencing conditions with Sun Java. As such, we will be endevouring to move all java based applications to OpenJDK (instead of Sun Java).

Disk Space

We have reached our DVD size limits, and need to be creative about saving space and disciplined in not losing space to duplication. We hope to ship a single Java and single Tomcat version this time, in addition to further consolidation around shared sample datasets.

Testing

With Quality being a key focus area for us, we need lots of help with testing.

Key Milestones

10 Jul 2012 Feature Freeze

07 Aug 2012 User Acceptance Test (all Apps installed and working)

28 Aug 2012 Final ISO sent to printers

... full schedule

About OSGeo-Live

OSGeo-live is an XUbuntu based distribution of Geospatial Open Source Software, available via a Live DVD, Virtual Machine and USB. You can use OSGeo-Live to try a wide variety of open source geospatial software without installing anything.

LISAsoft's training for Geospatail Open Source

If you work for one of the many Australian organisations which are starting to make use of geospatial open source, and you'd like to get skilled up in the technologies, then you will probably want to ask your boss to send you to one of LISAsoft's training courses.
LISAsoft has the following courses scheduled to be run this financial year:

• OpenLayers (adding maps to web pages), 12-13 Apil, Melbourne
• GeoServer1 (publishing maps), 26-27 April, Melbourne
• Advanced GeoServer (publishing maps), 23-24 May, Sydney
• GeoNetwork (managing metadata), 2-3 May, Sydney
• Effective Software Selection (writing business cases to compare proprietary and open source/open standards), 9-10 May, Sydney
• PostgreSQL Database Administration (coming soon)

Highlights from GeoNext Conference, Sydney, Australia

The recent GeoNext conference in Australia provided an interesting and very refreshing set of diverse presentations, covering the emerging technologies and businesses which are making use of geospatial.
I answered interview questions around how to successfully build a business around Open Source, with a focus on Geospatial.
James Moody, a futurist from CSIRO, boldly predicted that the next wave of innovation will address moving from a world of abundance to a world of scarcity, and the next big business opportunities will be based around improving efficiencies and recycling waste.
It was disappointing to discover that the Australian http://data.gov.au initiative, which was looking very promising a year ago, doesn't have anyone driving it anymore.
There were talks on augmented reality, cartography, geocaching, mobile gaming, building and marketing mobile applications, and some great lessons on building a startup company as 3 startups made a pitch to judges.
Further on the business front, I was very impressed with a presentation from Mark Carniello. It is challenging for Australian companies to break into the US market, largely because a personal sales call to the US costs $10K worth of travel costs - and yet Mark explained how his Australian manned company is successfully selling a mission-critical system to electrical utilities in North America by setting up a virtual office, and leveraging phones and internet technology.
This is certainly an event to look out for again next year.

OSGeo-Live 5.5 ready to distribute at international conferences

Version 5.5 of the OSGeo-Live GIS software collection and accompanying Lightening Presentation, has been released, ready for distribution at a large number of geospatial conferences and workshops from around the world.

About OSGeo-Live
OSGeo-Live is a self-contained bootable DVD, USB flash drive and Virtual Machine based upon Ubuntu Linux that is pre-configured with a wide variety of robust open source geospatial software. The applications can be trialled without installing anything on your computer, simply by booting the computer from the DVD or USB drive. The lightening overview introduces all these applications, and hence provides a comprehensive introduction to the breadth of Geospatial Open Source.

• http://live.osgeo.org

Highlights

• 50 Quality Geospatial Open Source applications installed and pre-configured
• Quality free world maps and geodata
• One page overviews and quick start guides for all applications
• Overviews of key OGC standards
• Translations for Greek, German, Polish, Spanish and Japanese

Contents

Browser Clients

• OpenLayers - Browser GIS Client
• Geomajas - Browser GIS Client
• Mapbender - Geoportal Framework
• MapFish - Web Mapping Framework
• GeoMoose - Web GIS Portal

Crisis Management

• Sahana Eden - Disaster management
• Ushahidi - Mapping and Timeline for events

Databases

• PostGIS - Spatial Database
• SpatiaLite - Lightweight Database
• Rasdaman - Multi-Dimensional Raster Database
• pgRouting - Routing for PostGIS

Desktop GIS

• Quantum GIS (QGIS)
• GRASS GIS
• gvSIG Desktop
• User-friendly Desktop Internet GIS (uDig)
• Kosmo Desktop
• OpenJUMP GIS
• SAGA
• OSSIM - Image Processing
• Geopublisher - Catalogue
• AtlasStyler - Style Editor
• osgEarth - 3D Terrain Rendering
• MB-System - Sea Floor Mapping

Navigation and Maps

• GpsDrive - GPS Navigation
• Marble - Spinning Globe
• OpenCPN - Marine GPS Chartplotter
• OpenStreetMap - OpenStreetMap Tools
• Prune - View, Edit and Convert GPS Tracks
• Viking - GPS Data Analysis and Viewer
• zyGrib - Weather Forecast Maps

Spatial Tools

• GeoKettle - ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) Tool
• GDAL/OGR - Geospatial Data Translation Tools
• GMT - Cartographic Rendering
• Mapnik - Cartographic Rendering
• MapTiler - Create Map Tiles
• OTB - Image Processing
• R Spatial Task View - Statistical Programming

Web Services

• GeoServer
• MapServer
• deegree
• GeoNetwork - Metadata Catalogue
• pycsw - Metadata Catalogue
• MapProxy - Proxy WMS & tile services
• QGIS Server - Web Map Service
• 52°North WSS - Web Security Service
• 52°North WPS - Web Processing Service
• 52°North SOS - Sensor Observation Service
• TinyOWS - WFS-T Service
• ZOO Project - Web Processing Service

Data

• Natural Earth - Geographic Data Sets
• OSGeo North Carolina, USA Educational dataset
• OpenStreetMap - Sample extract from OpenStreetMap

Geospatial Libraries

• GeoTools - Java GIS Toolkit
• MetaCRS - Coordinate Reference System Transformations
• libLAS - LiDAR Data Access

Other software of interest (not available Live)

• MapWindow GIS - Microsoft Windows based GIS
• MapGuide Open Source - Web Service

Where to find OSGeo-Live

You can pick up an OSGeo-Live DVD or USB and/or see the presentation at:

1. Our http://live.osgeo.org website
2. Malaysian Geospatial Forum, Malaka, Malaysia, March 2012
3. Spanish FOSS4G 2012, Girona, Spain, March 2012
4. FOSSGIS 2012, Dessau, Germany,March 2012
5. AWRA GIS and Water Resources Conference, New Orleans, USA, March 2012
6. GISRUK 2012, Lancaster University, UK, April 2012
7. FOSS4G North America 2012, Washington DC, USA, April 2012
8. FOSS4G-CEE & Geoinformatics 2012, Prague, Czech Republic, May 2012,
9. MapWindow/FOSS4G Regional Netherlands, Velp, The Netherlands, June 2012
10. International Environmental Modeling and Software Society Conference (IEMSS), Leipzig, Germany, July 2012
11. 34th International Geological Conference, Brisbane, Australia, August 2012
12. International FOSS4G2012, Beijing, China, September 2012
13. INTERGEO, Hannover Germany, October 2012

Credits
Over 80 people have directly helped with OSGeo-Live packaging, documenting and translating, and thousands have been involved in building the packaged software.
Packagers, documenters and translators include: Agustín Díez, Aikaterini Kapsampeli, Alan Boudreault, Alexandre Dube, Alex Mandel, Andrea Antonello, Andrea Yanza, Angelos Tzotsos, Anne Ghisla, Anton Patrushev, Argyros Argyridis, Astrid Emde, Brian Hamlin, Bruno Binet, Cameron Shorter, Christos Iossifidis, Dane Springmeyer, Daniel Kastl, David Mateos, Diego González, Dimitar Misev, Dominik Helle, Edgar Soldin, Eike Hinderk Jürrens, Eric Lemoine, Etienne Dube, Fran Boon, François Prunayre, Frank Gasdorf, Gavin Treadgold, Gérald Fenoy, Hamish Bowman, Haruyuki Seki, Henry Addo, Hernan Olivera, Howard Butler, Ian Turton, Jackie Ng, Jan Drewnak, Javier Sanchez, Jesús Gómez, Jim Klassen, Jody Garnett, Johan Van de Wauw, Jorge Arévalo, Jorge Sanz, José Antonio Canalejo, Judit Mays, Klokan Petr Pridal, Kristof Lange, Lance McKee, Lars Lingner, Lucía Sanjaime, Mage Whopper, Manuel Grizonnet, Marco Puppin, Mark Leslie, Massimo Di Stefano, Mauricio Miranda, Mauricio Pazos, Michaël Michaud, Michael Owonibi, Micha Silver, Mike Adair, Milena Nowotarska, Nathaniel V. Kelso, Ned Horning, Nobusuke Iwasaki, Oliver Tonnhofer, Òscar Fonts, Otto Dassau, Paul Meems, Pedro-Juan Ferrer, Pirmin Kalberer, Ricardo Pinho, Roald de Wit, Roberto Antolín, Ruth Schoenbuchner, Samuel Mesa, Sergio Baños, Simon Cropper, Simon Pigot, Stefan A. Tzeggai, Stefan Hansen, Steve Lime, Thierry Badard, Thomas Baschetti, Tom Kralidis, Trevor Wekel, Valenty Gonzalez, Yoichi Kayama
Sponsoring organisations

• The Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) provides the primary development and hosting infrastructure and personnel for the project, and for many of the software teams which contribute to it.

• LISAsoft provides sustaining resources and staff toward the management and packaging of software onto the Live DVD. http://www.lisasoft.com
• Information Center for the Environment at the University of California, Davis provides hardware resources and development support to the OSGeo-Live project. http://ice.ucdavis.edu
• The DebianGIS and UbuntuGIS teams provide and quality-assure many of the core packages. http://wiki.debian.org/DebianGis and https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuGIS

Presenting at GeoNext conference

I'm speaking at the GeoNext conference, and will be answering audience questions on the topic of:

"Where to start with Geospatial Open Source Software, and how to build a business around Open Source products".

Speakers at the GeoNext conference are covering topics around emerging geospatial business trends, which are being driven by such things as mobile phones, commoditisation of data, and web 2.0 principles such as crowd sourcing. It is running in Sydney, Australia on 29 February 2012. More details here: http://geonext.com.au/
If you will be coming, then let me know and come and say hello.

Big Spatial & Open Source week in Canberra, Australia

Next week, 14-18 November 2011, is a big week for Spatial and Open Source Technologies keeping our staff at LISAsoft super busy.

Tue-Thu 15-17 Nov: Spatial@Gov Conference:
Tuesday at Spatial@Gov is an Open Day to meet vendors. You can register for free at: http://www.cebit.com.au/2011/conferences/spatial-at-gov/registration. Wednesday/Thursday will be for presentations. Two presentations highlight LISAsoft's work - DSE's PLM geospatial data processing chain using Open Source tools is being presented, along with a Gazetteer presentation from Australian National Data Service (ANDS) which highlights a LISAsoft gazetteer client. LISAsoft has a booth at Spatial@Gov and James, Jody, Juliet and myself will all be there. Make sure you see us. (I'm arriving Wednesday morning). If you haven't got a ticket, then give me a call and I'll meet you outside.

7:45am Thu 17 Nov: OSGeo Breakfast:
We are having an informal gathering over breakfast where you can meet others of us interested in Open Source Geospatial Software. We will have demos of software available to look at. Register here: http://www.meetup.com/osgeo-aust-nz/events/40778042/

Mon-Fri  14-18 Nov: Open Source Developers Conference:
OSDC is two days of mini-conferences followed by three days of presentations on Open Source Software. LISAsoft's Jody Garnett is leading a developer workshop on GeoTools, the leading java based open source spatial library used by most java based open source spatial applications, as well as by many proprietary applications too. Introduce yourself to Jody if you see him floating around.

Mon/Tue 14/15 Nov: GeoNetwork Users Workshop:
This workshop will hear brief presentations from many of the Australian agencies who have deployed GeoNetwork, the leading open source metadata storage and publishing system.
The University of Woolongong's SMART Metadata Management and Discovery System, which is being developed by LISAsoft, is being presented. The system is based upon GeoNetwork, GeoServer, Bonita for workflow and a Postgres database. Look out for James Sewell who is one of our developer/architects on this project and who will be attending on Tuesday.

Call for interest in OSGeo-Live 5.5

We are starting to build the 5.5 OSGeo-Live DVD which will be released in March 2012, ready for the Spanish FOSS4G, FOSSGIS Germany, GISRUK in England and the MapWindow/FOSS4G Regional Netherlands Conference, among others. We would like to hear from anyone wishing to add new projects to OSGeo-Live, anyone wishing to extend or add extra translations, or anyone who has ideas on how we should shape the upcoming release.

Which project version?
Could each installed project please update our status sheet to note the expected version to be installed on OSGeo-Live 5.5. Status sheet.

Key Priorities for next release
Disk Space
    We have reached our DVD size limits, and need to be creative about saving space

Package Updates
    Update and test latest stable software releases

Quickstart Reviews
    We have Project Quickstarts, but most haven't gone through comprehensive review

Testing
    With Quality being a key focus area for us, we need lots of help with testing.

Key Milestones

    07 Jan 2012 Feature Freeze
    04 Feb 2012 User Acceptance Test (all Apps installed and working)
    25 Feb 2012 Final ISO sent to printers
... full schedule

About OSGeo-Live
OSGeo-live is an XUbuntu based distribution of Geospatial Open Source Software, available via a Live DVD, Virtual Machine and USB. You can use OSGeo-Live to try a wide variety of open source geospatial software without installing anything.

22 Essential Tools for Testing Your Website’s Usability

Here is an excellent article which covers the current best practices on website usability, along with the latest tools which support usability testing: 22 Essential Tools for Testing Your Website’s Usability. It covers the following topics:
1. User Task Analysis

• Learnability:
• Intuitiveness:
• Efficiency:
• Preciseness:
• Fault Tolerance:
• Memorability:
• Affordance:

2. Readability

• Ease of Comprehension:
• Legibility:

3. Site Navigability

• Information Architecture (IA):
• Findability:
• Efficiency of Navigation:

4. Accessibility

• Cross-Browser/Cross-Platform Compatibility:
• Color Choice:
• Use of HTML Accessibility Features:

5. Website Speed

• Webpage Response Time:
• Webpage Size:
• Code Quality:

6. User Experience

• Fulfillment:
• Usefulness:
• Enjoyment:
• Positive Emotions:

Image Source: http://9.mshcdn.com/wp-content/gallery/user-task-analysis-tools/intuitionhq.jpeg

5:1 ROI for Government by leveraging Open Source Communities

Australia's Office of Spatial Data Management (OSDM), achieved a 5:1 Return on Investment by supporting OSGeo-Live’s Open Source community.

The Challenge

OSDM wanted documentation for Open Source Geospatial applications to support their goals of promoting the use of geospatial resources.

The Solution

OSDM engaged LISAsoft to lead collaborative documentation development within the OSGeo-Live project. LISAsoft, who are key contributors to OSGeo-Live, supported volunteers from 42 projects to write consistent Project Overviews and Quickstarts. LISAsoft provided vision and leadership, wrote writing templates and guidelines, supported developers, and then provided editorial review.
Projects provided their domain expertise and gained quality, consistent documentation, reviewed by professional writers, which is promoted through OSGeo-Live’s marketing channels.
By collaborating with the community, OSDM achieved a 5:1 direct Return on Investment instead of writing all the documentation themselves.
On top of this ROI for documentation, OSDM also gained preconfigured software ready to run, and the community are translating documentation into multiple languages. This results in an indirect ROI of around 20:1.

The take-home

Strategic collaboration with Open Source communities can significantly amplify the impact of government spending.

LISAsoft is hiring Developers, Project Manager & Sales Person

• Lots of Open Source 
• Lots of GeoSpatial Maps
• Lots of Cutting Edge Technology

It seems that LISAsoft's formula of being geospatial systems integrators, making use of open standards and integrating open source with proprietary applications is working for us, as we we need more people.
We are looking for a range of roles, from junior to senior developers, a project manager, and a "technically savvy" sales or pre-sales person. Job descriptions are available here:

• Project Manager: http://www.seek.com.au/Job/project-manager/in/sydney-cbd-inner-west-eastern-suburbs/20620506 (Sydney, Australia)
• Junior Developer: http://www.seek.com.au/Job/junior-software-developer/in/sydney-cbd-inner-west-eastern-suburbs/20666353 (Sydney, Australia)
• Senior Developer: http://www.seek.com.au/Job/java-web-application-developer/in/sydney-cbd-inner-west-eastern-suburbs/20666427 (Sydney or Melbourne, Australia)
• Technically Savvy Sales: Contact me if interested

image source: http://s3.media.squarespace.com/production/652287/7607658/2009/04/intern-technical-programmer.jpg/w/150

OSGeo-Live 5.0 released - the Open Source Geospatial DVD

OSGeo-Live Desktop

Version 5.0 of the OSGeo-Live GIS software collection has been released.
OSGeo-Live is a self-contained bootable DVD, USB flash drive and Virtual Machine based upon Ubuntu Linux that is pre-configured with a wide variety of robust open source geospatial software.
The applications can be trialled without installing anything on your computer, simply by booting the computer from the DVD or USB drive.
A DVD or USB of OSGeo-Live is being distributed to every delegate at the upcoming international conference for Free and Open Source Software, http://2011.foss4g.org.

Homepage: http://live.osgeo.org

Highlights

• 47 Quality GeoSpatial Open Source applications installed and pre-configured
• Quality free world maps
• One page overviews and quick starts for all applications
• Overviews of key OGC standards
• Translations for Greek, German, Polish, Spanish and Japanese

Contents

Browser Clients

• OpenLayers 2.10 - Browser GIS Client
• Geomajas - 1.8 Browser GIS Client
• Mapbender 2.7.2 - Geoportal Framework
• MapFish 2.2 - Web Mapping Framework
• GeoMoose 2.4 - Web GIS Portal

Crisis Management

• Sahana Eden 0.5.5 - Disaster management
• Ushahidi 2.1 - Mapping and Timeline for events

Databases

• PostGIS 1.5 - Spatial Database
• SpatiaLite 2.3.1 / 2.4 beta - Lightweight Database
• Rasdaman 8.2 - Multi-Dimensional Raster Database
• pgRouting 1.05 - Routing for PostGIS

Desktop GIS

• Quantum GIS (QGIS) 1.7.0
• GRASS GIS 6.4.1
• gvSIG Desktop 1.11
• User-friendly Desktop Internet GIS (uDig) 1.2.2
• Kosmo Desktop 2.0.1
• OpenJUMP GIS 1.4.0.1
• SAGA 2.0.7
• OSSIM 1.8.6 - Image Processing
• Geopublisher 1.7 - Catalogue
• AtlasStyler 1.7 - Style Editor
• osgEarth 2.0 - 3D Terrain Rendering

Navigation and Maps

• GpsDrive 2.11 - GPS Navigation
• Marble 1.0.2 - Spinning Globe
• OpenCPN 2.5.0 - Marine GPS Chartplotter
• OpenStreetMap Tools - JOSM, Merkaartor, Gosmore, Osmarender
• Prune 12 - View, Edit and Convert GPS Tracks
• Viking 9.9.94 - GPS Data Analysis and Viewer
• zyGrib 5.0 - Weather Forecast Maps

Spatial Tools

• GeoKettle 2.0-RC1 - ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) Tool
• GDAL/OGR 1.8.0 - GeoSpatial Data Translation Tools
• GMT 4.5.2 - Cartographic Rendering
• Mapnik 0.7.1 - Cartographic Rendering
• MapTiler 1.0beta2 - Create Map Tiles
• OTB 3.10 - Image Processing
• R Spatial Task View 2.12.1 - Statistical Programming

Web Services

• GeoServer 2.1.1
• MapServer 6.0.1
• deegree 3.0
• GeoNetwork 2.6.4 - Metadata Catalog and Catalog Services for Web
• MapProxy 1.1.1 - Proxy WMS & tile services
• QGIS Server 1.7.0 - Web Map Service
• 52°North WSS 2.2.0 - Web Security Service
• 52°North WPS - 2.0 RC6 - Web Processing Service
• 52°North SOS - 3.2.0 Sensor Observation Service
• TinyOWS 1.0 - WFS-T Service
• ZOO Project 1.0.0 - Web Processing Service

Data

• Natural Earth 1.3.1 - Geographic Data Sets
• OSGeo's North Carolina, USA Educational dataset
• OpenStreetMap - Sample extract from OpenStreetMap

Geospatial Libraries

• GeoTools - Java GIS Toolkit
• MetaCRS - Coordinate Reference System Transformations
• libLAS - LiDAR Data Access

Credits

Over 80 people have directly helped with OSGeo-Live packaging, documenting and translating, and thousands have been involved in building the packaged software.
Packagers, documenters and translators include: Activity Workshop, Agustín Díez, Aikaterini Kapsampeli, Alan Boudreault, Alexandre Dube, Alex Mandel, Andrea Antonello, Andrea Yanza, Angelos Tzotsos, Anne Ghisla, Anton Patrushev, Argyros Argyridis, Astrid Emde, Brian Hamlin, Bruno Binet, Cameron Shorter, Christos Iossifidis, Dane Springmeyer, Daniel Kastl, David Terrativa, Diego González, Dominik Helle, Eike Hinderk Jürrens, Eric Lemoine, Etienne Dube, Fran Boon, François Prunayre, Frank Gasdorf, Gavin Treadgold, Gérald Fenoy, Hamish Bowman, Haruyuki Seki, Henry Addo, Hernan Olivera, Howard Butler, Ian Turton, Jackie Ng, Jan Drewnak, Javier Sanchez, Jesús Gómez, Jim Klassen, Jody Garnett, Johan Van de Wauw, Jorge Sanz, José Antonio Canalejo, Judit Mays, Klokan Petr Pridal, Kristof Lange, Lance McKee, Lars Lingner, Lucía Sanjaime, Mage Whopper, Manuel Grizonnet, Marco Puppin, Mark Leslie, Massimo Di Stefano, Mauricio Miranda, Mauricio Pazos, Michael Owonibi, Mike Adair, Milena Nowotarska, Nathaniel V. Kelso, Ned Horning, Nobusuke Iwasaki, Oliver Tonnhofer, Òscar Fonts, Otto Dassau, Pedro-Juan Ferrer, Pirmin Kalberer, Ricardo Pinho, Ruth Schoenbuchner, Samuel Mesa, Sergio Baños, Simon Cropper, Simon Pigot, Stefan A. Tzeggai, Stefan Hansen, Steve Lime, Thierry Badard, Thomas Baschetti, Trevor Wekel, Valenty Gonzalez, and Yoichi Kayama.

Sponsoring organisations:

• LISAsoft provides sustaining resources and staff toward the management and packaging of software onto the Live DVD. http://www.lisasoft.com
• Information Center for the Environment at the University of California, Davis provides hardware resources and development support to the OSGeo Live project. http://ice.ucdavis.edu
• The DebianGIS and UbuntuGIS teams provide and quality-assure many of the core packages. http://wiki.debian.org/DebianGis and https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuGIS

Launch of Australian Open Technology Foundation

Another positive step toward the Australian Gov 2.0 agenda will be the launch of the Open Technology Foundation on Wed 14 September 2011.

The Open Technology Foundation (OTF) is an authoritative peak body for the Australian and New Zealand public sector focused on advancing the uptake of open technologies in Government.

My understanding of the goals of the OTF is that they wish to provide support services to government agencies in deploying open source and standards based systems.

US Defence purchasing emphasises Open Technology Development

The United States secretary of Defence has released the guide, Lessons Learned & Best Practices for Military Software. It provides some of the most practical software purchasing guidelines for governments to date, and strongly emphasises the use of Open Standards, Open Source, and associated development practices.
Below are some highlights from the paper:

Definition of Open Technology Development:

OTD is an approach to software/system development in which developers collaboratively develop and maintain software or a system in a decentralized fashion. OTD depends on open standards and interfaces, open source software and designs, collaborative and distributed online tools, and technological agility.

Key Benefits:

• Increased Agility/Flexibility: Because the government has unrestricted access and rights to the source code developed with taxpayer funds, ...
• Faster delivery: Because developers only need to focus on changes to, existing software capabilities instead of having to redevelop entire systems, ...
• Increased Innovation:...
• Reduced Risk: creating new capabilities from scratch is riskier than re-using existing capabilities...
  
• Information Assurance & Security: ...
  
• Lower cost: The first cost to fall by the wayside with OTD is the monopoly rent the government pays to contractors ...
  

Wise spending:

As Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said “The gusher [of money] has been turned off and will stay off for a good period of time.” DoD needs a more efficient software development ecosystem – more innovation at lower cost. OTD squeezes financial waste out of the equation by reducing lock-in and increasing competition.

Innovation is fleeting:

... sole possession of the software gives the U.S. a distinct advantage over its adversaries. However, technological advantage is usually fleeting. Often there is a commercially-developed item available to the public that begins to perform similar functions. As it matures, other organizations begin using this non-GOTS solution, potentially rendering the GOTS solution obsolete. Such cases often impose difficult decisions, as the government must determine if it will pay the heavy asymmetrical cost to switch, or if it will continue “as usual” with its now-obsolete GOTS systems.

Sample questions provided for:

• Analysis of Alternatives (AoA) ...
  
• Request for Information (RFI) ...
  
• Request for Proposal (RFP) ...
  

Success Checklist:

• Community first, technology second. Often the military will focus on creating technology solutions when stakeholders aren't onboard or are non-existent. ...
• Default to open, closed only when required.
• Your program is not special. ... Search for existing IT projects and industries and use their solutions.
• Set simple rules about how to share and how to access GOTS. ...
• Intellectual rights. Using open source software licenses greatly simplify rights management for the government.
• Negotiate and demand unlimited rights in software and source code. Government purpose rights are basically crippled license scheme that should be avoided.
• Do not create new software licenses, use existing licenses – they are understood in commercial industry and have been approved by corporate counsels.
• Greatly limit co-mingling of government-funded software with privately-funded software (especially if it is patented). If co-mingling is required develop in a modular fashion and require unlimited rights.
• [Don't] co-mingle export-controlled and classified software with other software. Developers should instead devise a “plug-in” architecture (where possible) that allows use and sharing of software not restricted by export controls or classification.
• Limit incorporating proprietary (especially non-OTS) components that incur licensing fees, especially if the system is designed to depend these components.
• Plan and fund management of the project's community and maintenance of source code as an O&M transition element.
• ...
• Use/modify/create open standards, in that order. Verify that the standards used are open; a simple test for openness is to determine if the standard is implemented by open source software.
  

Federal government and the DoD policy documents:

• Office of Management and Budget (OMB) M-04-16’s Software Acquisition. This memo simply states that the existing federal policies on software acquisition apply equally to both proprietary and open source software. Note that there is no preference for proprietary software over OSS.
• DoD CIO’s Clarifying Guidance Regarding Open Source Software (OSS) of October 2009. This policy memo specifically notes that “There are positive aspects of OSS that should be considered when conducting market research on software for DoD use”. It even states conditions under which “Software items, including code fixes and enhancements, developed for the Government should be released to the public (such as under an open source license)”.

License Selection Criteria:

When picking an OSS license, keep the following criteria in mind:
1. Use an existing OSS license;
2. Make sure it is actually OSS. certified as OSS by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) and as Free Software by the Free Software Foundation (FSF).
3. Use a GPL-compatible license. Most OSS is released using the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2 or version 3. This does not mean that all OSS must be released using the GPL, but choosing a license incompatible with the GPL (both versions) is very unwise.
...
6. Use a common OSS license.

This article is released under the CC-By-SA 3.0 License.
Image sourced from Open Technology Development paper.

Project Overviews & Quickstarts for New Zealand's SDI Cookbook

New Zealand's Geospatial Office (NZGO) has been making excellent progress toward developing a national Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI). A few of weeks back, NZGO released their first version of a Spatial Data Infrastrastructure (SDI) Cookbook, which “has been developed to provide guidance for the early stages of implementing a national SDI”.
Its sections cover:

1. Data Stewardship and Custodianship Responsibilities
2. Introduction to SDI Standards
3. Making Data Accessible: Characteristics of a Provider Node
4. Making Data Able to be Found: Characteristics of a Catalogue Node
5. Using Data Efficiently: How can my Organisation use a SDI? - Participating in a Spatial Data Infrastructure

NZGO has invited vendors and open source projects to populate the final section 6, “How Existing Systems and Products can Contribute to the SDI”. For section 6, it is interesting to note that NZGO has decided to follow the same documentation sourcing process we use for the OSGeo-Live DVD project. For OSGeo-Live, we source consistent Project Overviews and Quickstarts from close to 50 geospatial open source projects. NZGO wanted something similar for the SDI Cookbook, also sourced from multiple projects, but extended to include proprietary applications as well. So NZGO approached us at LISAsoft to tailor the OSGeo-Live documentation sourcing process for their SDI Cookbook purposes. As such, we have provided templates and writing guidelines for Project Overviews and Quickstarts, which makes it easy for projects to author quality and consistent documentation. These have been included in a Request for Information (RFI) that NZGO has sent to vendors, and the resulting responses are intended to be included into NZGO's SDI Cookbook. LISAsoft will also be providing the OSGeo-Live documentation in the format requested by the RFI.
I'm excited to think that the resulting SDI Cookbook has the potential to become a very valuable resource not just for New Zealand, but for other countries as well. But what I'm particularly interested to see is where this SDI Cookbook will go from here. How will the Cookbook be updated and maintained as technologies improve? Will community feedback be collected? If so, how will it be applied and resourced? How will NZGO balance broad crowd sourced information verses quality review cycles? Will the Cookbook be extented into other areas, such as training? Will other countries collaborate with New Zealand in extending and maintaining the Cookbook, or will rival Cookbooks be developed? These are some of the questions I've been raising with NZGO, and which I believe will determine whether the SDI Cookbook will become wildly successful, or will just briefly be a useful document for a while in New Zealand.

Image Source: http://magicalmusings.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/cookbook-color1.gif

Memoirs of a Cat Herder - Coordinating OSGeo-Live volunteers

Presented at the GeoRabble forum.
I’m about to share some insights into how to build a successful open source community.
Actually, a bit more than that - also how to tap into, and coordinate the expertise of hundreds of world leading developers, packagers, technical writers, project managers, marketers, translators and educators. And have all these people volunteer their time for free.
Because we have actually done all this - in building the OSGeo-Live project. At its core, OSGeo-Live is a DVD pre-configured with close to 50 geospatial Open Source applications, along with accompanying data and documentation, available in multiple languages. It is used in workshops and is handed out at conferences all around the world. I think I'm safe in claiming that OSGeo-Live has grown into a highly successful project, and that we have a learned a number of key lessons worth sharing.
We started OSGeo-Live in 2008 with the aim of building a DVD of geospatial open source which was to be handed out at the international conference for free and open source software for geospatial, or FOSS4G. The FOSS4G conference provides an attractive international marketing pipeline that we could offer projects. And as some of us were on the FOSS4G organising committee we were able to say, "if you get your application installed on OSGeo-Live, then we will hand this DVD out to all attendees at this highly targeted conference".
We laid out a very clear vision of our target deliverable - namely a stable release of Open Source and accompanying marketing documentation. This clear and simple goal helped us many times by providing a framework to test the multitude of decisions that are inevitably encountered in such a project.The process of building our first version of OSGeo-Live involved installing geospatial applications on a base Ubuntu distribution. We followed install instructions, configured applications, resolved dependencies and conflicts, asked questions on email lists, and finally, after much hard work, we produced our first release for the 2008 FOSS4G conference. This was a very important first step as it showed that we had the commitment to follow through and deliver.
However, it also highlighted a number of our failings. We had followed a fully manual install process, so when the next Ubuntu release came out, we had to start the installation process again, from scratch. This was completely unsustainable. We needed to automate the install process, and we needed projects to show us how.
But our first calls for help from projects was embarrassingly underwhelming. You see, the perceived learning curve for a developer to learn the intricacies of packaging was considered unacceptably high and volunteers were not stepping up.
To fix this, we got one of our packagers to write an example install script along with clear, step-by-step instructions. We then went back to developers with the message of "if you can spend a couple of hours writing a short install script which looks like this, then we will market your application on the OSGeo-Live DVD".
Small effort / High Value. And this worked! 28 projects packaged their applications for our 2.0 release.
We followed the same process with documentation, as our first round of documentation was mostly written by developers and as such was quite ... variable. So the Australian Office of Spatial Data Management stepped up and sponsored one of LISAsoft's technical writers to create a template Project Overview, along with writing instructions. We then asked projects to write the documentation, and the technical writer followed up with documentation reviews, then all the documents went through our publishing pipeline in order to produce consistent, quality material. So by applying a template / write / review / publish process, we were able to achieve significant efficiencies by allowing experts to focus only on the bits they do best and thus reduce the cost of contributing.
Another key to our success is that OSGeo-Live doesn't provide free rides for projects. If a project's community doesn't write installers and documentation, then they don't gain the marketing value of OSGeo-Live. This creates the business incentive for projects to help. It also frees up the core OSGeo-Live team to support a multitude of projects.
And by multitude, I mean 50 odd, and 70 odd volunteers, which becomes a project management challenge for a flat organisation structure like ours. To reduce swamping everyone with emails, each project nominates at a contact person to liaise between their project and OSGeo-Live. We use a wiki, issue tracker, email lists, and Google Doc spreadsheets and follow standard project management processes of managing a schedule and tracking status.
The simple statement of "if you want your application on the next release, it needs to be packaged this week" has been a motivating trigger for many of our volunteers to get started.
But the key motivator, along with the fun aspect of working on open source, is that there is a strong business case for each of our contributors to be involved.

• Application developers get valuable marketing, and get their documentation reviewed and translated.
• Our packagers' jobs are a lot easier because domain expects now take ownership of a large part of the packaging task.
• By just sponsoring documentation review, The Australian government's Office of Spatial Data Management gained a 5 to 1 return on investment when creating Project Overviews
• Translators gain quality source documentation and marketing pipeline.
• LISAsoft, who build geospatial systems using Open Source, have increased public acceptance of Open Source, by helping coordinate OSGeo-Live.
• For only the cost of printing, conference and workshop organisers impress delegates by giving them a free, comprehensive DVD of software.
• Likewise, the OSGeo Foundation is gets comprehensive, translated documentation of projects which can be put on its website.

Everyone is a winner!
So if I come back to my opening statement of "what is required to tap into, and coordinate the expertise of hundreds of world leading experts, and have them volunteer their time for free?" I guess I'd say:

• Start with a clear and compelling vision; inspiring enough that others want to adopt it and work to make it happen.
• This should be followed by a practical and believable commitment to deliver on the vision. Typically this is demonstrated by delivering a “Minimum Viable Product”. 
• Be in need of help, preferably accepting small modular tasks with a low barrier to entry, and ideally something which each person is uniquely qualified to provide. If anyone could fix a widget, then maybe someone else will do it. But if you are one of a few people with the skills to do the fixing, then your gift of fixing is so much more valuable, and there is a stronger moral obligation for you to step up.
• Set a quality bar, and only accept contributions which achieve this level of quality.
• Ensure that every participant gets more out of the project than they put in.
• Avoid giving away free rides. If you are giving away something uniquely valuable; and it costs you time to provide that value for your volunteers; then it is okay to expect something from your volunteers if they wish to get something in return.
• Use templates and processes to facilitate domain experts working together.
• Reduce all barriers that may prevent people from contributing, in particular, by providing step-by-step instructions.
• Set a schedule and work to it.
• Talk with your community regularly, and promptly answer queries.
• And most of all, have fun while you are doing it. Because believe you me, it is hugely rewarding to share the team camaraderie involved in building something that is much bigger and better than you could possibly create by yourself.

Australian Government defines Policy for Opening Public Sector Information

Australian Government are continuing their Gov 2.0 agenda, by releasing policy defining the Principles on Open Public Sector Information. It focuses on ensuring that "data be freely available, easily discoverable, understandable, machine-readable and reusable".

The principles are:

1. Open access to information – a default position
2. Engaging the community
   
   • ... consult the community in deciding what information to publish ...
     
3. Effective information governance
4. Robust information asset management
5. Discoverable and useable information
   
   • ... published in an open and standards-based format and is machine-readable
   • attach high quality metadata ...
6. Clear reuse rights
   • ... the default licence condition should be the Creative Commons BY open license.
7. Appropriate charging for access
   • ... agencies to facilitate public access to information at the lowest reasonable cost.
8. Transparent enquiry and complaints processes

Press Release: http://www.oaic.gov.au/news/media_release_principles_public_sector_info.html
Policy: http://www.oaic.gov.au/publications/agency_resources/principles_on_psi_short.pdf

Image Source: http://usedbooksblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/trinity-college-library-dub.jpg

Secrets of Mashup Design

This presentation covers high level design tips for building Mashup Websites, presented to surveyors, business people and other members from the Australian Surveying and Spatial Science Institute. It profiles readers and how they interact with web pages, the technical strengths and weaknesses of mashup technologies, which leads into defining best practice for building mashup websites. You can see the full 18 minute presentation below, and at: http://cameronshorter.blip.tv/file/5068745/

A Guide to Open Source Software for Australian Government Agencies

The Australian government have released a draft of their revised Guide to Open Source Software for Australian Government Agencies. You can add comments on their blog until 15 April 2011. This guide outlines 3 principles:

1. Agencies will be required to insert a statement into any Request for Tender that they will consider open source software equally alongside proprietary software.

2. Australian Government agencies will require suppliers to consider all types of available software (including but not limited to open source software and proprietary software) when responding to agencies' procurement requests.

3. Australian Government agencies will actively participate in open source software communities and contribute back where appropriate.

Image source: http://www.mspmentor.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/open_source.gif