StateoftheMap Organizing Committee/Minutes/2019/2019-01-17 Meeting

Most discussions of the SotM Working Group happen on GitHub issues (private repository). The meetings take place every second Monday on the Mumble server of HOT project. The frequency of the meetings might increase in the last weeks before the conference.

These minutes are no formal minutes but serve to inform the membership about the activity of the working group. There is no guarantee that all meetings are minuted. See also our entries on blog.openstreetmap.org.

GitHub issue numbers are given in braces.

Time and location: 2019-01-17 20:00 UTC, HOT Mumble server

Scholarship Process

Timeline: first: set up committee, form a selection team

• Mikel would like to have at least two people join his efforts, at least one from Heidelberg who has some knowledge about organising events in HD.
• He thinks that the types of scholarship offered in the past are good and should be continued. We will have two rounds (initially one and a second one if enough funding is available).
• Scholarship application deadline should coordinate with talk submission deadline.
• We will ask applicants in the application form to do some research on their own.
• Selection criteria will be published with the call for applications.
• Nobody should get a scholarship who got one last year.
• Mikel thinks that we should prefer (or even grant only to?) people who never got scholarship.

• Christine asks if there is one in the local team who has experience in dealing with a travel agent.
• Mikel thinks that the travel agency does not have be located in HD.
• Melanie: University might be supportive with scholarships because there are conference from time to time there. Rachel could also be helpful.
• There was a meeting of the HOT Summit WG today.

• Rachel suggest common application form. People can indicate there if they want to attend both events. This leads to HOT pay the nights during HOT Summit for SotM scholars as well.
• Michael: Each event should pay its own scholars.
• Rachel: HOT Summit would usually be able to afford three or four scholarships and usually restricts to speakers

Conference Catering

• Martin: Studentenwerk it is not possible to have lunch in the Mensa and catering on Saturday and Sunday. Other days (Monday + HOT Summit) are possible.
• Martin asks if there should be a warm lunch or sandwiches only.
• Christine: sandwich would be ok
• Martin and local team will asks some companies for quotes.
• Michael suggests to buy beverages (except coffee) from a beverages store.

Academic Programme Committee

• Marco and Yair evaluated the seven applications.
• Main focus on research experience and editorial experience. Minor focus on location and gender (but all are men).
• Yair and Marco ordered the candidates based on research and editorial experience on their own and their rankings were the same.
• Marco has met Peter and thinks that Peter is the most suitable candidate. Marco met Godwin as well (in Milan). He is younger and not as experienced but quite active. He can add some experience in terms of topics. Marco has never met Levente but reviewed some papers by him but assesses him good experience. Jennings could be a good candidate as well. However, Jennings is still a PhD student and therefore too young. He should be taken into account in future years. The other applications are poorer. They lack experience or did not enter the required information.
• Marco thinks that the team should not be larger than five because it is alreday quite difficult to manage such a large teams.
• Yair agrees. He has met Peter, Godwin and Levente. He agrees that Peter is a very good candidate. He thinks that Levente and Jennings are equal. Levente has experience in reviewing papers but not in organising. However, we have to limit the number of place.
• Christine and Michael agree.
• Adam: Levente has experience on the technical side of OSM and knows he used apis for open data when there was a workshop in a conference that they woked together. He could bring a bit more of a technical side to the committee.
• Melanie: Jennings would be a good fit but he should be kept in mind for future.
• Marco: We will take the others into account as reviewers.
• Marco: Academic PC team will meet independent from the working group and report about their decisions.
• Martin wonders why we only got seven applications. He thinks that a public mailing list could be not so invitive to women.
• Marco: Public mailing list is in the spirit.
• Martin: Public visible rejection of candidates might harm candidates.

Programme Committee Building

• Martin is still a bit confused how it should work. He has the impression that Christine still wants to be the lead of the committee.
• Christine: we decided against giving the leading position to some external
• Martin: So, it is still the whole team?
• Christine: not really. Michael wants to be involved with technical issues only, Mikel cares for scholarships and it is questionable if Gregory will be involved.
• There was some confusion between Martin and Christine about the roles which could be cleared in this meeting.
• Melanie asks who is involved.
• Christine: The programme committee is part of the working group and we don't have a formal chair but we have a core team (Christine, Martin and Gregory).
• Christine suggest to have a larger team soon and suggests an expansion by about 10 to 15 people not only as reviewer, but also to be involved in developing the call for abstracts
• Martin suggest to prefer people as reviewers who participated last year. He thinks that we have a long list of potential candidates whom we could approach.
• Christine: the program committee is not only for reviewing, also involved in the whole process (developing selection criteria, drafting call for papers, ...)

Next meeting

Christine: 31 January if there is no board meeting, I investigate that