Dear colleagues,

I am requesting all  universities and SMEs to please inform this  NASA Europa  worldwide international challenge http://eurochallenge.como.polimi.it/   to their students and staff and encourage active participation. It is a great opportunity for everyone to contribute and collaborate in a global challenge. So please share the NASA Europa  worldwide international challenge  with your students and SMEs worldwide. It will also be a great dissertation project for your undergraduate , master students etc as well as contribute to help build open innovation tools  for the benefit of cities  worldwide.

For education,  i believe that  Open educational Principles are fundamental to empower people and communities to make sure future generations are fully empowered [1]. There are many examples that helped us reach this decision.  Randal Hale gave of one example [2] on the issues on updates etc faced by a particular high school in USA.  I thought it is NOT a local problem but  a wider education problem that as educators we need to be aware of. That example was a real eye opener of the long term costs/sustainability issues of properitory GIS software in geoeducation and hence i decided to take action and contact AAG [3] when i learnt they were planning to use properitery GIS only for their geoeducation program and humbly requesting AAG to include open principles in Geoeducation and make use of FOSS4G tools. If the vendor decides to withdraw or change the conditions of thier offer to schools now or at any stage in the future what will happen to the poor schools. This is my biggest worry. Basically schools, teachers and academics will be at the mercy of the  vendor. The vendor can change thier mind any time.

As part of my research at the University of Nottingham over the last 10 years,  i have worked with many different organisations in various research projects from not for profit foundations to properitary companies and i think everyone has their right to be part and contribute thier value addition to the wider geo ecosystem . Having many players is key for ensuring strong competition and making sure there are no monopolies created.

It is also important they all companies play by the rules (it doesn't matter if they are open source company or properitary company) , noone should not use thier dominant market position to create monopoly directly or indirectly. That was why we decided to educate the geocommunity when there was efforts to undermine Open standards in LiDAR for example [4], [5]. All this is based on our supporting Open principles in education and working for Openness can help to reduce inequality and create quality education and digital economy opportunities for our bottom billions brothers and sisters worldwide   [6] and  help create a world that is more accessible, equitable and full of innovation and opportunities for everyone.


Best wishes,

Suchith Anand
http://www.geoforall.org/


[1] http://opensourcegeospatial.icaci.org/2016/02/future-of-gis-should-be-empowerment-not-enslavement-examples-needed-for-geo4all-newsletter/
[2] http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/discuss/2015-June/014310.html
[3] http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/ica-osgeo-labs/2015-June/001742.html
[4] http://www.osgeo.org/node/1518
[5] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/LIDAR_Format_Letter
[6] https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/ica-osgeo-labs/2016-February/005083.html