Hello,
As Chair of OSGeo:UK, I am trying to develop greater links between OSGeo:UK and the academic community in the UK. I organised a very successful FOSS4G:UK Local 2022 (https://uk.osgeo.org/foss4guk2022local/) with approximately 300 attendees across the UK. We managed some engagement with the UK GIS academic community (two venues out of nine being hosting by universities and 16 respondents out of the 108 who responded to the survey identifying as students or academics). However, I think we can do more with the academic community in the UK, and I think they could be a great source of people and contributions to OSGeo (global and local) and open source projects more generally.
The annual Geographical Information Science Research UK (GISRUK) conference is happening in Glasgow, UK on 18th - 23rd April 2023 (https://gisruk.org/gisruk-2023/) and strongly supports ECRs (Early Career Researchers). ECRs are typically masters students, PhD students or post-docs (prior to getting a permanent lectureship position, i.e. tenure). GISRUK run a series of workshops and sessions for ECRs and I would like OSGeo to sponsor one or more of these. Typically GISRUK attracts around 100-150 participants, and usually ~50 of these are ECRs.
I am asking for US$750 (~GBP£606) to support this. I would suggest we use this to sponsor an ECR evening session (e.g. pizza or similar). This usually takes place at the beginning of the conference, to facilitate their networking and integration into the wider conference. Any surplus could also be used to support ECR scholarships, which would pay for the registration fee for any ECRs who do not have funding from their university to attend the conference.
I appreciate I am not being very specific yet, but I think there is scope for some negotiation with the GISRUK organisers. Attached is their 'standard' information for sponsors, but I think we could probably get a stand, session sponsorship and maybe some scholarships with the $750.
In terms of support from the marketing committee, I already have a role up banner from the code-sprint (thanks Astrid!) and a few left over stickers and print outs from FOSS4G & FOSS4G:UK. I think some OSGeo:UK stickers would be good (OSGeo:UK can pay for those) and I am open to suggestions as to what else might be good. I suspect stickers would go down well with this audience.
For full openness, I am on the GISRUK National Steering Committee, with responsibility for ECRs (Business). We also have a ECR (Academic) rep, James Haworth. I am also Treasurer of the RGS-IBG GISc Research Group, who are contributing to the scholarships as well.
I hope this covers my request in enough detail. If you have any questions, please do ask!
Best wishes,
Nick.
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Nick Bearman
+44 (0)7717745715 | @nickbearman:matrix.org
nick@geospatialtrainingsolutions.co.uk
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