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
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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
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