FOSS4G'13

I'm really pleased to be able to welcome Ken Field (mapping/cartographic guru) as the curator of the FOSS4G Map Gallery. We will be discussing in this thread with how this will work and the logistics associated with it. In particular we will addressing the following points in the very near future:
1. parameters for entry (software/data restrictions? classes/categories?)
2. call for maps (process and timeline)
3. map requirements (any criteria for outputs [size/scale/etc]?)
4. submission process (digital format?)
5. selection process (judges? community element?)
6. awards/prizes? (sponsored?)
7. publication?
8. gallery logistics (space required? location? boards? catering for non-delegates? returns policy?)

We'll be organizing a Skype call in the next few days (hopefully) to get the ball rolling....

If anyone has anything that they'd like to add to this discussion please do so....

My 2 cents:

1. I loved Barend's idea from yesterday's call about providing some datasets for people to work with. It would be great to have some that were relevant to the Nottingham area.
2. It would also be great to offer people the chance for the winning work to appear in Barry's planned open source atlas- perhaps with a short piece about what tools they used etc- I'm going from http://atlasofdesign.org/ as my inspiration for this
3. I think it would be nice to put it to the popular vote at the event
4. I'm not keen on too many restrictions as to what people do- if it's lazy or a bit rubbish then it won't win
5. We can easily come up with a gallery system on the website so that people can upload entries- then they need to bring a printed one of the appropriate dimensions to the event. I'm sure we can find somewhere (corridors?) to display them.

Thanks to Steven (initially) and Rollo for asking me to be involved...I'm really looking forward to the whole event in my home town and to helping stage a great map gallery.  I've some experience of map gallery competitions from a range of different events and initial thoughts are simply to ensure we're not too prescriptive but at the same time providing an arena that encourages 'high quality' mapping. 

Hi all, especially Ken!

my idea was to get cartography and visualisation submissions well before the conference and collect them into a published book, done via  print-on-demand service such as lulu.com. The book would be available at the time of the conference, and a prize presented to the best-of-book map.

I got working on some design, collected a few examples from leading open-source map people, and splatted a low-res version here:

https://github.com/barryrowlingson/osgeoatlas/downloads

There was quite a bit of initial interest from my postings on the osgeo discuss list and elsewhere, but momentum is not conserved in this universe.

So can we fuse the FOSS4G Map Gallery and the OSGeo Atlas?

Do we go for the 'here's some data, now you lot make lots of different things with it' contest approach? Or do we use it to for people to show off their work relating to their own projects (which was my idea for the atlas)? Or both? Part 1 and Part 2 maybe?

I think there is a case for a category where we provide some data and invite people to create with it and another category that they can showcase their own projects with their own data

Happy with either approach really. I guess there's more work involved in coming up with a dataset that we want people to use- particularly one that's appropriate to the location.  Also, if we're going to go for some print-on-demand stuff, then the idea that appeals to the widest possible market might be a good idea- in which case that's probably going to be the "use your own data" category...

Map Gallery update...

Rollo and I had a good discussion last week and thrashed out ideas for the map gallery really as a way of identifying the broad approach and what will work best. To make a good gallery, the important thing is to keep it tightly focused but at the same time allow participants freedom to submit.

The concept is going to be 'mapping with open' (working title) as a way to focus people on the idea of integrating and innovating with 'open'.  The point here should be to encourage people to share their work and demonstrate how they are integrating a range of technologies and data to build something purposeful.  We want it to remain as unhindered as possible for two reasons. First, it encourages people to submit their work if there are fewer barriers. Second, it makes curating a gallery much easier! While posting data extracts and encouraging people to hack a map this isn't easy to manage and could potentially discourage many as well as producing very similar maps.  We want people to showcase THEIR work, not just their abilities to make a map rapidly using provided data.  There's a wealth of different mapping approaches out there and I think we have a real opportunity to create a showcase for that breadth.  I don't subscribe to the idea that people should have to use a completely open workflow...I would prefer to encourage innovation through integration.  

To that end, we'll define some general rules of engagement but the principle rule is that they should be engaging with 'open' to some extent.  We shouldn't be too prescriptive but participants will have to submit a short document to identify what software/platforms and data they have used.

We will encourage submissions just for the sake of submitting and also give participants the opportunity to have their entry submitted to one of several competition categories. For instance, these could be 'best open software integration', 'best open data integration', 'best overall open integration', 'best cartographic display' and we also talked about a sort of anti-cartography prize for the 'best fancy schmancy, spinny roundy, all singing and dancing to music map'...which we'll get Steven to either enter or judge :-) Yes, we'll get some rubbish (its inevitable!) but at the conference itself we can focus on the decent stuff.

Paper or digital (or both)? Digital. Paper isn't dead BUT fewer people are going to be prepared to produce a paper version of their map and submit it ahead of time.  There are also significant problems associated with people submitting large format posters and us having to find space for a large gallery of static displays. So we'll encourage people to submit URLs to allow us to create a hosted gallery on the web site.  I guess if people want to submit a static map (rather than a web map) then they can submit a PDF which we can provide a link to...but the pattern for most mapping these days (particulary which uses 'open') is web based so I feel this will be the main focus by default and it's what we should be focused on.

At the conference itself. we are looking at ways to display the work but we plan on having a large projection screen with rotating examples (I can curate this). This might be a random selection or, possibly, the finalists for the awards that we choose ahead of time.  I also suggested we have either large screens, again cycling through examples, OR perhaps an iPad gallery...a wall with 10 or so iPads that people can hover around....this would be particularly cool I feel. This approach will also help reduce the need for a large gallery area. We also plan on showing map examples in between talks.

In due course I can rope people in to act as judges of the various categories so that shouldn't need to be thought through at this stage to any great degree.  I also think we should have a community chosen award which will encourage people to actually go look at the gallery and vote.  A mix of awards judged by expert panels and the community itself should create a range of opportunities for people to get recognition for their work. We might want to think through a session where we invite the best map authors to do a lightning talk on their work...

Rollo and I also briefly discussed what time period we might accept.  For instance, do we accept maps that were created several years ago or perhaps provide a timeframe for their production.  I suspect most people will submit relatively new or recent work but one way to encourage this might be to stipulate that any entry for an award should have been created in the year prior (or 2 years)?

In the short term, then, we need to generate a 'call for maps' which should identify the general principles.  We will also need to build part of the web site capable of allowing people to submit their work and allow us to manage the display of the submissions.  I will be working on the 'call for maps' document in the next few days but please feel free to chime in with some thoughts. We'll set a closing date for entries which should allow us to have enough time to build an online gallery app that acts as a portal to the work that people submit.

Shouldn't be reading this on hols but couldn't resist a peek :)

Looks really exciting except for me submitting bad taste spinny map. That assumes I can even make a map as opposed to mouthing off about others'

Cheers from cold Turkey

I'm really keen on having a real printed map atlas, with a proper ISBN and all that. This would create a lasting physical legacy of the conference, and would look great on our shelves.

 Large-format posters would be a problem, but a number of tastefully framed A4 pages wouldn't need much wallspace, and at a cost of a few pounds for a frame. A lot cheaper than 10 iPads (and more open).

Then, like a proper gallery, we sell them.  By the end of FOSS4G, red dots on all of them.

It might be something worth having up for the duration of the AGI meeting and FOSS4G, for the extra customers.

 Barry, I'm not sure that anything that Ken suggests excludes the potential of an atlas (or displaying the pages from the atlas as a gallery - which is an idea I like, especially the 'red dots' - dots on a map, what's not to like?!). I guess the thing for us to understand is how we can integrate the concept (it could be a defined category for entry requiring, presumably, more rigorously defined parameters?) and what the time frames are (I'm not sure what the practical process is for publishing an atlas, but I gather that you do?). 
Can you outline the stages etc based on your previous research into this so that Ken get a better view of the proposition?

Barry et al.
A printed atlas is a nice idea...but let's have a look at the practicalities.  My only concern is that I feel it unlikely there will be sufficient quantity or quality to make it work and it'd be pretty embarrassing to end up with a thin or poor atlas  The annual Map Book that Esri produces is a classic example. Nearly a thousand maps are submitted annually and let's be frank...most are pretty weak because the map's aren't well thought through or designed.  I doubt we'll get anywhere near that amount.  I think it would have to be an entirely separate 'print map' category to avoid people just submitting screen dump style entries from web maps. Print and web require very different design considerations.  Anyway, let's look into it and see where we get to...

Here's an initial draft for a Call for maps for the Opening up the Map map exhibit. We can use this as a basis for defining a call for maps to go on the web site and also to inform the design of the submission system so that it fits the call and is able to support the intended way that we'll setup and display/use the maps at the conference.

Three pages seems a bit tl;dr for this. I think it needs a bit of work so there's a short executive summary, and then deeper details for anyone who needs it. Want me to do a rewrite? Share it on google docs?

The doc is for planning purposes so we can determine whether the general approach is workable and plan for the resources required to support submissions etc. It'll need pruning into a top level summary which I'll do when we're clear that its achievable.
Ken

Sent from my Android phone using TouchDown (www.nitrodesk.com)

Okay, so at the moment we aren't committing to producing a map gallery exhibition? So that mentioning it on the web site (with very little detail, of course) or the flyers would be a bad idea right now?

What do we need to make this happen? Some or most of:

1 Map Gallery sponsor
2 Call out for submissions.
3 Submissions.
4 People to select submissions.
5 Wall space at the venue for paper submission display
6 Space with screen/projection tech for interactive submission display
7 Judges or better still community judging system
8 Short slot at the conference wrapup plus prizes
9 Submission sustainability system (web site to keep everything for a while)

Any of these particularly problematic and mission critical? Anything I've forgotten?

I love most of this. A couple of questions:

• Do we want 2011 maps or should we say 2012-3?
• Are there too many categories?

In response to Barry's points some thoughts/comments

• A specific sponsor would be great but it is not a go/nogo - I have mailed ESRI Inc re sponsorship and have had no response to date. Alternatively Ordnance Survey have gone diamond on us so we could give them the Map Gallery sponsorship as a thank you
• You will need to get a few cartofolk for selections, note BCS event is a couple of weeks before FOSS4G. I am assuming I can leave to you guys to organise.
• Wall space should not be a problem but we will have to check re bluetacking etc. Alternatively we could scrounge some free standing boards for the maps. Claire can you check
• A space and projector should be straight forward, designing an interface to allow delegates to browse the gallery without it being a general internet terminal will be up to you
• Keep the judging simple
• Slot for presenting winners and commended and prizes in plenary should be fine. Rollo can you include in plans

I'm taking the chairman's privilege of opening to a slightly wider audience in case others have suggestions or to check on facilities etc.

Can we have the map gallery as a topic on next week's call before we go live with the Call for Maps

Acceptance of maps – 2012/13 might be too constraining?
Categories – up for debate but more categories = more chances of winning = more incentive. The top awards (best in show and community vote) effectively give us two levels of award anyway.
Sponsors – I’ll leave that up to others but there’s no specific need for a sponsor
Submissions/selection of submissions – I am happy to do this once
Judges/judging – leave that to me; it’s not crucial at this stage and I can easily put that together at a much later stage. It’s not difficult
Wall space - unnecessary for ‘print’ as maps will be entirely digital. We will need some space for some screens/iPads as discussed previously.
Slot at wrap up – 10 minutes or thereabouts to go through winners
Infrastructure – this is crucial…there needs to be a submissions system, a content management system (of sorts) and a way of publishing the maps via the web site. I don’t have the scope or expertise to build this as part of the web site but it’ll need to be largely in place to handle submissions at the very least.

I really don't think anyone is going to lend us a bunch of iPads or other touchscreen devices to be left in a space that is potentially available to the best part of 1000 people. They'd need to be very bolted down and connected to power and internet. The alternative would be standard PCs hidden in cabinets or chained up with non-touch screens and mice/keyboards.

 There's still the problem of kioskifying any web-based presentations so people don't quit the browser or click off outside the exhibit URLs. That is a hard problem. You can hide the browser chrome, but one link to google within an exhibit and off we go. You can't put everything on a local network because exhibits may require complex server-side stuff that we can't provide, or get assets such as images and javascript from external sites. Hard hard problem. Easiest solution would be to have a human wander round keeping an eye on things and resetting when needed.

 Are you expecting the submissions to be static web maps or are we really exhibiting interactive map web sites here? The other possibility would be for submissions to be a small number of screenshots so we could just carousel them without interaction, and people could scan a QR code or click links on the conference web page to get the full web site experience.

 I feel that the map gallery should be about the aesthetics of the image, not the dynamics of the user interface. I'd rather people couldn't interact with the exhibits, because then they get distracted by zooming boxes and swishy scrolling. It should focus on the singular representation of ground truth through the medium of cartographic representation..

 If I've missed the point here, then I'm out, because we have irreconcilable differences over what this is all about.

When Rollo and I spoke a few weeks back he felt we might be able to acquire a small set of display devices (precise type to be determined). Yes, the area that they are in will need to be ‘policed’ to ensure (a) the kit doesn’t walk and (b) as you point out, that whatever portal we use to act as a front end is retained. Of course, whether this is possible in resource terms needs to be established quickly in order to get the idea off the ground in this way.

Maps are moving beyond print. Open Source and web publishing are the main drivers for this. I have experience of helping run the Esri Map Gallery and last year it was astonishing how many printed maps were just screen shots of web apps which kinda defeats the point. I’ve also been involved with the ICA Map Gallery which was strictly paper but the majority of which were produced by National Mapping Agencies, not individuals or smaller groups – a different beast altogether. So…the idea here is to curate a portal that links through to live web maps that participants are hosting themselves OR to act as a container for PDFs of static maps that are submitted. The discussion thread for the map gallery makes that clear . No intention to do any complex server-side stuff or anything like that. This is all about facilitating an open platform for sharing maps in whatever form the authors have produced them.

Interaction is a very real feature of modern mapping. Aesthetics is also important but is currently lacking…this is something of a wider issue but let’s be honest, there are many many terrific web maps out there. This is an opportunity to gather examples that are at the cutting edge; not a way to simply display old-skool cartography. I believe the approach can provide a way to encourage both.

If we simply went for a print-style gallery that too comes with all manner of potential pitfalls but we felt that here we might try and do something innovative rather than simply do what other conferences do. Yes, there are challenges but given where we are in the general shift from print to web it’s about time conferences also moved with the times. Don’t get me wrong about print…I’m all for it…but by giving people the opportunity to submit their static maps as a digital file we have that covered.

Okay, well this is so far away from my original concept, which was for a small but tastefully presented selection of graphics, curated in much the same way as a photographic exhibition, away from the blinking lights and click me hard click me fast demands of web sites, as an oasis of calm in a corner of the conference. Somewhere you could go with your coffee and sandwich, and just have the experience of purity of image, as the artist intended.

So it looks like you and Rollo have been sorting this out anyway, I'll remove my oar and you guys can row together.

I think you will struggle with the hardware (availability and security) but it's up to you. If you can organise it all that would be great, however I can't commit FOSS4G to providing kit, securing it, insuring or any other financial commitment.

Barry. I hope that we can continue to have your input to this . Your enthusisasim is always appreciated. It's worth pointing out that this concept is something that was originally discussed as being part of GeoCommunity 2012, but we decided against it in the end. One of the reasons for that was a lack of space in the venue for the display of physical maps. The approach of using digital display for maps was at first a practical work around, but one that has, as outlined by Keith, raised a lot of interesting possibilities. Yes, there are practical problems with the digital display, but I'd hope that one was not to destroy any 'calm' with "click me hard click me fast demands of web sites" (I loved the terminology). In regard to the digital display I have two ideas that I'm chasing up.....one may work?!

I suspect if you are thinking 'physical maps' as in A1 or A0 posters, then yes, that does take space, but limit it to A4 or smaller, and frame and mount nicely, and a small space is a gallery of visualisations and maps. How many of us have seen the Stamen watercolour open street maps printed and presented as art? I'd love to.

Anyway, from talk with Ken off-line I can see he's put a lot of thought and has experience in this, so I look forwarded to an immersive multi-media experience in September. Meanwhile, I'm off to buy some music on vinyl :)

@Rollo if someone came to me asking to borrow some tablets for an exhibition, I'd say "Yes, as long as you are willing to include that personal iPad of yours as well, in order to show confidence that you're going to look after mine..."

I've plenty more to do for the conference, and this looks like it could get complicated quickly, so I don't think I can help.

Points accepted. There are technical challenges....while begging for ipads was not one of my current plans, it might come to that ;-)
In terms of the 'maps as art' can I quote from the Atlas of Design Vol 1. (nacis) "we didn't know this going in, but it turns out that creating a book, even one where other people provide most of the content, is a pretty hefty undertaking". The result of that effort is a great book, but I would worry that we do not have the resources to manage such a project in the time to present such a curated exhibition.

The submission deadline for "Opening up the Map" is 31st July. We have 18 submissions as of this morning.

Views on extending until say 19th August?

Yes, why not- we should also ramp up the publicity about it.

Jo

Yes, I see no reason not to extend the thing to almost the date (let's say the 5th Sept). In theory it's simple to load the maps onto the display screens (in theory). We'd need to give time to the judges - but I'm assuming that this could be done during the event (need to check with Ken who the judges actually are!).

We've had submissions from about 10 organisations - 20 maps in all only half of which are 'static' - others are websites.

@Rollo - do you want to make the announcement re extending the call for maps?

It can go out on Twitter (done) and discussion boards (@Jo?) - I don't think it needs a specific PR piece?

Extending deadline is fine and it shouldn't be a problem to sort things out for the event in terms of display.
As for judging... I can sort that out and have made decisions ahead of conference. I'm currently on hols but that won't be a problem to sort.
Ken

Sent via my Android

In regard to displaying maps (bringing the off-line discussion on line) we're hoping to have
- 6 plasma screens: 'dump' screens with usb slots to run 'slide show' mode off.
- 1 ipad wall: still seeking confirmation of the software that will run this.

The plasma screens use in-build "slide shows" which are really designed for scrolling through photos' and so not ideal or flexible (e.g. the slowest refresh rate is still too fast for showing maps). Each TV type will have it's own version of the 'app' and I won't know ours until I see which TV's we get as to what ours will be. We'd then need to mess around with the images to make them look good on the screens.

My current thinking is a bit radical: stick a table to the back of each screen. At £36 it's not as crazy as I thought - could they perhaps double as prizes?!?!?

Anyone know of a good Android app for displaying the maps?

http://dynamic.focalprice.com/CE0292B/7_Android_404_A13_12GHz_Tablet_PC_with_External_3G_1080P_Playback.html?Currency=GBP

I'd hope to source the HDMI cables from here, but otherwise are about £5 each.