The Evolution of the GeoNode Community

and also yes sometimes

just Johnson was there were a little bit about me uh I've worked on the June projects since

2010 founded a consulting company called her Little and I wanted to you about this for quite a while and I'm also a consultant the World Bank's Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and resilience and I found this I mean really start now that 2 boys in in the news and you know that when you have your time I have a couple of let's see disclaimers 1 my affiliation and that is generally of actually canceled for the big of myself and I have this so this talk is based on

research report that there was world Bank commissioned duty commissioned by a powerful of open source strategies and I have a copy of it here and I have to get like special dispensation from the world bank in to print copies that is not quite finished think the banks used to producing reports that might move stock market to topple governments which this is certainly not 1 of those but anyway to get the special operations that but anyway so Karl Fogel as the gentleman who wrote a book called The producing open source software which is I would consider the Bible are an open source project interview problematic read but then I should use the right up front this is not at all a technical talk I'm gonna talk for like 1 slide about the product itself it's really about reviewing the history of the project and contributes to it and finds it and how both of these things evolve over time and the purpose of this report was really to look at the bank's returned return on investment into open source were the 1st time for large investments and open source office on looking at the problem from an economic perspective and then really trying to get to the best practices when data organizations invest in open source and we really and I really encourage lots of other projects to look at the look at the system and the last slide you have was about sustainability and I think it's like hugely important to look at your project from a sustainability perspective and look at the this is

the best practices that emerged in in keeping your project sustainable and funded over time so

this is the only sort of a technical nature notice you're hoping to get some technical this you and on top of it but basically generalises content management systems for geospatial then it's based on Python Django and it's basically user-facing so spatial data infrastructure it's now used by hundreds of organizations around the globe from the very beginning to that chess

agencies on a plan to little tiny little tiny 1 that just came from Sri longer longer-lasting we can give it talk there obligated workshop there and it's based on stable mature open-source tools and frameworks because we're not trying to change the latest fad and that with things are relatively secure as mature and stable so always ignored you posters user regulators during the Django bootstrap generating a lot of things and so on just a

brief history the project but were started in

2009 and with a little bit of funding from the world bank so will facilitate intervals solely for disaster reduction resilience the changes are as a few times but in the initial development work was done by public plans OpenGeo which is now bounds on in in January 2010 there was that the earthquake and the world bank you know chair and others really realize that they have coordinate on data sharing and I'm I remember doing a lot of image processing and data distribution I think they really realize at that time that this is a real problem like sharing data between agencies and in an emergency situation like that in this there was some good efforts there to get data sharing between big

agencies and but I think that that that was the kind that turning point certainly with things like OpenStreetMap and using that 100 thousand OpenStreetMap and and to prevent realization that they need to up the game there so in in 2010 later in 2010 Jia formed a team that was devoted to generate Open Data and fire hired a full-time developer and out later that year the German Foundation which is called earthquake model and the interesting project itself project funded by the re insurance the insurance company that insured the insurance companies and they began to use unit as the basis of their open quaint platform and then 1st presentation about you was phosphogen 2010 June of 1 . 0 was released in December 2010 which is about when I joined Open plans OpenGeo in 2011

Harvard University's Center for Geographic analysis used you know as the basis of the world that project and the data that you generate was used as the basis for the rest of the platform Indonesia and and then we have 1st Roadmapping Summit in 2011 which I'll talk about a while in the mastery projects was founded in 2011 and used unit its foundations In October 2011 the emerging sort Open Data disastrous management group and activity are found in the Open Data for resilience initiative or open your eyes and the 1st real sort of the constraint was held in February 2012 version 1 . 1 was released and several companies later in surely 11 started offering courses for difficult Spatial then of course and you begin to expand its portfolio companies or customer portfolio and then later in 2012 the army

geospatial ceremony core engineers began the road JCT Joint completed by demonstration using you know and this is where Geoghegan projects like that came from and in 2013 GFDL our that maybe push and deploy ton of genomes and Caribbean countries and in 2013 we have a sprint in Alexandria long but these are the basis of data points in the history of the project on and the last 1 they're only during this knowledge of his face and I get about a weeks so we're going complete incubation here in the next if all goes well next week and then will release amount release site where such as a brief history of product and so From a haven't talk about this research report have made several copies you if you want to go there but basically those just guarantees with Karl Fogel to sort of look at the history projects the World Bank that it making efforts in both of sort of codified GIS enterprise-wide yes

policies on and also to move Prof open source policy and so this is what the research reports that been that's gone into the preparation the sort of enterprise-wide the open-source policy this is kind of a case study on so coral and his team did from interviews with about 15 people from 10 different organizations they looked at from the quantitative analysis of or an issue tracker mailing list source code repositories bugs but trackers all that sort of thing and they also do some qualitative data analysis from non-public so sources basically but beyond that what makes and yet are interested in the sort of return on investment for the

money that they spend in in using that to justify further best so I they also did some qualitative look at the interactions between participants in bug tracker actually not this this is search methods then this is a sort of his principle that emerged after having heard from their investments and in guiding the the judges investments in open source and so these are the kind of really

important things that I think has led to the success of the project and its sustainability so what is this they both higher internal people in contract out a contract it out to other organizations and to outside developers will increase the commercial viability and sort of social service areas of project and internal staff can contribute to developing software and provide kind of day-to-day oversight of outside contractors I think that's been pretty important when it when the project and then they are also really done a huge huge amount of sponsoring in-person events so I'm all over the world we have these roadmapping summits standards and codes instance and you're going

really instrumental in that in of people need to learn a collaborated and I think that I think we all collaborate much more effectively than we could if we just worked together only remotely and then they also use their sort of institutional cachet to create partnerships and so a lot of staff time was dedicated to making connections and with other institutions in pure institutions the UN and the other big organizations and that many of these have already gone to invest in product themselves and then also there's a huge effort to train users and developers all talking but more about that but I then not probably 15 countries all over the world to do training and i just there really encourages client countries to deployed you know to invest in these deployments and an alkene stuff like essentially I guess I should likely going to have to have some misconceptions about the world bank because so just a tiny bit of background of the valve and then the your tax dollars in in Europe and the US and many of the countries are used to loan money to developing countries for building bridges and roads in flood control infrastructure and things like this and and the laws of general and ties over a really long time and the goal is to raise GDP is in the you know promoted that and so and generally with these projects they have technical assistance package that's you know that what we're going to build a road and bridge would also work to improve your ability to run the GIS that you develop a GIS of project so the the bank does not and so the World Bank's may have just yards may approximately 1 million to 1 and a half million dollar investment over 7 years and like I said they simultaneously high outside firms an internal staff work on and they

provided country investment to train governments academia local firms Cytoscape came ideas that came from trading in Sri Lanka where there were many university professors there some parts of the and you for all which is fantastic computer science professors and some local firms and basically Acadia shock training many cases or and and of the governmental agencies and it really grew way sort growing community and the necessarily pursue partnerships with other organizations in the DR space is disastrous management and and being presented collaborating

invest a platform together in and out we also collaborated closely technically with other stakeholders outside of the disastrous in space on this sort roadmap for the open source projects use to break down there so fairly people outside development and internal development and also like support services and outreach training and that's where that roughly 1 has to wonder what happened about and so obviously like we all of these kind of best practices open source right on the project has open source from the very beginning of

encourage engage other organizations and commercially and his partners and investing in collaboration the structure and the community-building events in person and and I think that was a key thing as usual funding that as the organization they can use their funding choices to Signal to peer institutions were invested in this work we our money and our social class are united official tested and you should say so is a quote from the paper so at this point you know its future as a public good is secured is now used and maintained by many other organizations governmental non-profit and commercial GTR can benefit for

a long time after even if they stop investing in platform of so what really important I think is to really choose the right contractors partners so and slaves were and I think it's been really important success project that the early contracts went to an established industry player and not to random small firm to somebody that had there sort of catching community to yeah if not I think the price of reduced coverage is doing this it's probably like something attention to write and a really drove that kind of socialization among the potential early adopters for free in GAD are also push like fully open development strategy from day

1 they pretended like that behaved as a fully open source problem your fourier running software did you know that issue trackers and mailing list as you did roadmapping you well formula at running software on working with overdue super instrumental in and then very quickly and you have its own motivation began thinking about how how you know about commercial the demand and other business opportunities you know essentially as soon as people realize that the world Bank's using OpenGeo to develop software or maybe we should but afterward you are using the same software organization itself and the that commercial opportunities like this this article and so on and so obviously open source projects the

healthiest when the contribute organizations all work together but there are also pursuing their own objectives such as the start of the project you know what I've seen in corals got lots of experience and ideas in and outside of space and then you know the more organizations are all working together all the project the incentive there is improving the but stable environment right so if you got a project that's only support 1 organization In this up and walk away in the process of verifiable but as soon as there's many organizations contribute supporting that it becomes you know more sustainable and maybe 1 organization whatsoever they may come back another later so I the other thing is that that working with in general and following the best practices and really push this like developer connections of a whole lot of union that that I worked with for a long time so but and we really built all these library personal relationships between the developers and users and this can lead to greater

resilience of the project as a whole and of as project developers change organization and the knowledge and expertise to carry with them I'm stuck to the speed of light as a project that developers and generous their expertise goes with them it's not developers position influence in the community is not really tied to the quarters the blogs and that also ladies and when we have a way to form partnerships to initial partnerships and organization early adopters signal to the other organizations about the viability of project and you get a sense of all where on accumulation is more and more organizational contributors also the

credibility of the base and yet they are really true that early involvement organizations and as ecosystem grows organizations have less interested in bringing brought new partners and promote the stable growth and part of the

project so this is the kind in 2011 2010 2011 these all of organizations that support the

project or participated in the uterus and users the contributors and we start adding more than 20 12 2013

and then a whole lot more in 2014 and 2016 and you see if you take a look later there's some of the largest suggested instead of planet in that list of we also like lateral mapping events which really cool brought all the stakeholders together to discuss their own priorities and each organization presented the church implementation discussed the goals short medium term and we agreed on sources of technical that could be tackled together think this is really important to them and talk about it but it's really hard to address technical that these projects because nobody wants to pay for you in

fact generally of but then we did brainstorming on their development priorities and more traditional grammatical and they try to reduce duplication effort and promote awareness between organizational priorities and then on new new use collaboration tools the document this roadmap and use that have this a funding priorities of organizations of

all skip over this but basically I we have and we we have consensus exercise for everybody agrees like these are important things share funding and this kind of you know then you know that stakeholders can use this

contracts future work on also gender encourages the baseline countries used you know in the in

their projects and we encourage them to use of local and international contractors to produce their collected and published and then local geospatial firms are really like engaging in developing countries support expertise many of them going to use the project and then in there of you another other work and so now we have a psychological ecosystem of like the small providers that you have small firms that use so you're in there now I used you know their projects and from they may gone on to become more contributors or to provide contributions of all this is really quite but we also promote this culture of documentation which I feel like I don't know pretty hypocritical laughter held at Oxford in the workshops but but really promoting the culture of properties that documentation is really really important and you have a nice website this seems like a really big dividends in promoting promoting the project

people on board very quickly and so on and so we have this growth in this commercial provider ecosystem and 20 2009 and 2010 so that should say 2010 there is only 1 NGO analysis like large list companies that can offer commercial support and in then you know here's a kind of look at the comments but let us go through all possible down so the the best practices of number 1 run project in the open from the very beginning like I said the head began behaving like an open source project right from day 1 I really

encourage other commercial organizations to diversify investment role that that commercial provider ecosystem and really take an active interest in ventilation eventually in acting and communications especially at the beginning and getting the word out drives usage and actually many users going temperatures and really find encourage the right partners and and persistence and that advocacy can pays off when when part of the letters and how they benefit from open source which is a difficult sell sometimes on

that also investing in community infrastructure and processed by UCI but you don't really amplifies people's work so that the investment should be only encode also and infrastructure documentation and then by this said hold events get people attend the face-to-face means really like long lasting relationships that survive when you go back and trust that it's the only but I'm the spiral of this week on and then again the initial investment can be a funding signal that provides an indication of an organization's commitment to other potential partners and then to expand the range of users of really interesting user experience and a lot of us like to go out and combinations of succeeded in oral the following list but what if there are any questions that

you have received this sort of thing I love the back of the box questions although

University the fact is all it is in essence you 1 or 2 people results with that video and the other thing that some years and realized that there was something that could you know exhaustive list of all you of users were working posted something 1 that you have a friend you're facing this thing that was going to be our from the from the beginning the summary and that and it was the 1st it is I mean I can go back and I think this is like Karl has always here but I think this is a list of current companies that provide commercial support activities on their own and all these companies like you you you good form bugfixes or a lot of this standard is

supported the have people of the data support many these outside the US but I think the

alcohols or if they have something like that we saw that I would give a training for them over there and 2 years later I talked to those guys in the on use like all over all these different projects all over the place and the bank made an initial to that trainees people of getting engage local firms and then its payoff like tremendously because that is the 1 that I was going to use it be or not yeah you have everybody from you know just solutions in the heart of the consultancy company and you know this is the quantity quite a range of commercial providers and I think that's a pretty easy for people find supported and if there's a university or anything it's really difficult it's in a certain way and like hundreds of and it's a lot of there's a quite a number of there are are public or to online or we can find out about the others cost you know each