OpenAerialMap/Meeting Mar 05, 2015

Mar 05 19:02:38 Cristiano: Hello! OAM meeting starting in a couple of minutes
Mar 05 19:02:59 Cristiano: Who's around?
Mar 05 19:03:00 BlakeGirardot: Hi
Mar 05 19:03:53 BlakeGirardot: You want me to mention the meeting in the osgeolive channel?
Mar 05 19:04:13 dodobas: hi
Mar 05 19:04:17 lossyrob: hello
Mar 05 19:05:59 Cristiano: I sent a link to the other IRC client login, we've been having problems with the Kiwiirc one
Mar 05 19:06:10 Cristiano: Hi dodobas and lossyrob
Mar 05 19:07:21 Cristiano: Blake: unless you see someone in OSGeoLive who might be interested, but we won't be talking about that today.. I don't think
Mar 05 19:07:27 mojodna: hello
Mar 05 19:07:43 Cristiano: Hi mojodna
Mar 05 19:08:08 BlakeGirardot: Oh, ok. np
Mar 05 19:08:08 Cristiano: Here's the link to the agenda, feel free to add-comment https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vxKjn0LJAHGSEWCqdB9hPVWi8_i83xcqlA2BBFYY898/edit?usp=sharing
Mar 05 19:09:27 Cristiano: I just wanted to touch on the catalog tech challenge, submission deadline is today
Mar 05 19:10:08 Cristiano: I have received several inquiries about whether we accept company applications and requests about extending for another week
Mar 05 19:10:50 Cristiano: So I will check with Kristen - who is receiving applications - to see how many we have by today, and then we should decide
Mar 05 19:12:21 Cristiano: I've heard of around 5 so far, but I know people would often submit at the last minute
Mar 05 19:13:17 Cristiano: anyway, if you have any thoughts on that, the reasonable number of proposals we should have and if we should extend the deadline, let me know
Mar 05 19:13:26 * nhv waves Mar 05 19:13:36 Cristiano: hey nhv
Mar 05 19:14:43 Cristiano: that's the other thing, we have FOSS4GNA coming up this week, so it may be a good opportunity for people to chat about it and maybe get together -during the hackathon? - to put a propsal in?
Mar 05 19:15:41 nhv: I won't be there but FOSS4GNA is a great place to chat things up
Mar 05 19:16:16 Cristiano: We would also like to have someone from the OSGeo community to join us in evaluating the proposals
Mar 05 19:16:44 lossyrob: I would +1 putting it until after FOSS4G.
Mar 05 19:17:40 dodobas: does 1 week really makes a big difference ?
Mar 05 19:17:51 dodobas: we should extend
Mar 05 19:18:48 Cristiano: OK. Let's see by the end of today :) We just wanted to get started as soon as possible, since part of our budget is tied to an already delayed schedule
Mar 05 19:19:29 lossyrob: Are you working with a hard deadline? I saw the development timeframe moved from 6 months to 4 months without change of scope.
Mar 05 19:20:29 Cristiano: Kinda, we should have a pretty complete product by the end of summer
Mar 05 19:21:03 lossyrob: gotcha
Mar 05 19:21:13 Cristiano: and we also reduced the time frame to match some of the rates that were sugested for this type of work
Mar 05 19:22:14 Cristiano: Anyway, if anyone from OSGeo would like to help us with the proposals, otherwise I'm going to 'volunteer' Alex who seem to be following the discussion quite a bit from the beginning
Mar 05 19:23:27 Cristiano: - who I don't see today, btw :)
Mar 05 19:24:55 Cristiano: So, moving on.... I wanted to get started defining roles and areas of contribution
Mar 05 19:25:24 Cristiano: I listed people and organizations that expressed some interest in the project or joined this discussion
Mar 05 19:25:53 lossyrob: That's a pretty good list IMO
Mar 05 19:25:56 nhv: I am sure Alex would do a good job
Mar 05 19:26:05 Cristiano: I would be nice to see where their interest is, what part of the project they may be able to contribute to, and what overlaps with some of existing efforts
Mar 05 19:26:33 * nhv is fairly prejudiced as to how he would build a system  :-) Mar 05 19:27:02 lossyrob: Cristiano is there some place that we could document common efforts and possible overlaps?
Mar 05 19:27:24 Cristiano: The wiki on GitHub could be a good place
Mar 05 19:27:32 peter_swigert: Hi all- sorry for the late join. I'm from the UC Berkeley School of Information- just had been in touch with Cristiano yesterday about a small research project we are working on here relating to aerial imagery.
Mar 05 19:27:41 nhv: I hope the proposals will be available for any interested party to review
Mar 05 19:27:56 Cristiano: nhv: we don't necessarily need a system to start... we need a software that we can deploy
Mar 05 19:28:34 nhv: fwiw I am definately prejudiced towards the python stack these days
Mar 05 19:28:34 wonderchook: I'm not sure about releasing proposals to any interested party, proposals sometimes have confidential company information in them
Mar 05 19:28:40 Cristiano: Hi Peter, we are just about to introduce interested parties and their potential role-interest in OAM
Mar 05 19:28:40 lossyrob: Cristiano if only github supported wiki Pull Requests...perhaps some markdown documents that people coudl contribute to?
Mar 05 19:28:46 wonderchook: +1 on Python stack
Mar 05 19:29:18 Cristiano: lossyrob: absolutely, MD docs
Mar 05 19:29:38 Cristiano: the repo is pretty much empty now, so be creative :)
Mar 05 19:31:04 Cristiano: nhv: I would be open to publish the proposal after asking permission to the submitters
Mar 05 19:31:17 nhv: perfect
Mar 05 19:31:18 lossyrob: Ok, I can try to put together a shell of something and add Azavea's project, in between the craze of busy that surrounds other work.
Mar 05 19:31:47 Cristiano: OK, thanks lossyrob
Mar 05 19:32:05 nhv: I don't think we need to publish $ amounts
Mar 05 19:32:36 Cristiano: $ amounts are fixed and public anyway
Mar 05 19:32:40 nhv: right
Mar 05 19:34:18 Cristiano: So, considering that we have an interest as part of this project and the funding we received to understand some of the theory-research questions behind sharing open aerial imagery, I was really excitied to see Peter's project at Berkeley
Mar 05 19:34:55 Cristiano: Peter - could you tell us a bit more about your work and research project?
Mar 05 19:35:47 peter_swigert: Sure thing- so I'm a master's student at the UC Berkeley School of Information. We study a variety of topics (as you could imagine from a department as strangely named as "School of Information") including data science, UX/UI, and information law and policy.
Mar 05 19:36:28 peter_swigert: A few of my classmates and I are interested in increasing open access to aerial imagery, and have started a short project (to be finished in early May) based around helping people collaborate on projects that might be supported by having aerial imagery/video
Mar 05 19:37:43 Cristiano: -And just to add from the OAM story, the original idea of OAM started with the concept of making aerial imaging more democratic, where people can collect their own data - a la OSM - and be able to share it easily
Mar 05 19:37:47 peter_swigert: We've been in touch with a variety of folks in the drone enthusiast community here in the Bay Area, and our initial hypothesis is that it's a shame that these folks fly drones recreationally and don't have much use for the images/video they do capture (besides personal enjoyment) and that it would be great to connect them with individuals who do have need for aerial imagery (say, someone interested in getting a time series of photos of the s
Mar 05 19:38:59 peter_swigert: We are basically building on Public Lab's Mapknitter tool to allow people to more effectively share, communicate and collaborate on a project. Person A posts some photos, stitched as a map, and some metadata/description of their project. Person B finds the project, says "Hey, I live near there, maybe I can connect with the drone pilot and ask them to get some photos of location X that I would be interested in."
Mar 05 19:39:27 peter_swigert: Anyways, we see ourselves building prototype of this kind of platform, with a couple use cases (possibly just hardcoded/Wizard of Oz'd) provided by early May
Mar 05 19:39:57 peter_swigert: So sounds like in terms of overall mission, we are totally on the same page as OAM.
Mar 05 19:40:42 peter_swigert: And while we likely won't be continuing this specific project aggressively past May (we all finish our Master's degrees then and haven't discussed any future plans for the project)
Mar 05 19:41:04 peter_swigert: We'd love your thoughts and feedback now, as well as hopefully in the future as we develop initial interfaces.
Mar 05 19:41:13 peter_swigert: And hopefully we can contribute some lessons learned and some designs to y'all as well.
Mar 05 19:41:29 Cristiano: That's very interesting and I see lots of common interest on what we are trying to do with OAM. It would good to expand on the discussion on the mailing list and see if someone from your group can go beyond the may class timeframe to follow the development here
Mar 05 19:41:45 Cristiano: great
Mar 05 19:43:09 peter_swigert: Sure thing- and anyone should feel free to reach out to me directly at peter.swigert@ischool.berkeley.edu
Mar 05 19:44:04 Cristiano: As you can see from the agenda, I listed some other groups that may be interested in the project, I would like to approach some of them identifying areas-role of OAM that may best fit them
Mar 05 19:44:58 peter_swigert: Sounds like we are focused a little more on the front end and UX aspect of an aerial imagery platform, as we don't plan on building a full scale system and so don't have to worry about a huge repository of images on the back end. We've mostly been designing task flows at this point and mocking up interfaces, and as we get something up and running I'll share it with OAM.
Mar 05 19:45:05 peter_swigert: Thanks everyone!
Mar 05 19:45:06 Cristiano: so, we may need your help to identify and create a relation graph based on functions and needs of these groups
Mar 05 19:46:44 Cristiano: We also had another offer from Chris @ Meedan who is proposing a usability analysis study, so that's another part of the research that we'll be doing
Mar 05 19:47:53 Cristiano: If you can think of anyone else we should reach out or may be intersted in OAM, please add it to the list there
Mar 05 19:47:55 Cristiano: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vxKjn0LJAHGSEWCqdB9hPVWi8_i83xcqlA2BBFYY898/edit?usp=sharing
Mar 05 19:48:53 peter_swigert: Cristiano: Great. Will do. We'll be writing up a fair amount of documentation/final report as part of the requirements of our project that will have a fair amount on users, communities and organizations in this space, so I'll also share that in early May.
Mar 05 19:49:57 Cristiano: Next is the schedule, which is partly what I mentioned above. We are trying to have catalog development starting by the end of this month
Mar 05 19:50:26 Cristiano: and then soon after start working on the processing node part of the software
Mar 05 19:51:32 Cristiano: We may issue another tech challenge or work directly with companies that have already have built similar type of open source code
Mar 05 19:52:55 Cristiano: Does anybody have objections, comments or suggestions about that schedule?
Mar 05 19:54:57 Cristiano: Well, I take it you all agree :) We are also planning to have a 2-3 days sprint in DC during or right after the HOT summit
Mar 05 19:55:12 Cristiano: http://summit.hotosm.org/
Mar 05 19:58:04 Cristiano: Last, we are starting to define roles for the development and we are interested to see what other groups may be able to contribute their own time to it
Mar 05 20:00:07 Cristiano: HOT is sponsoring lead developers, volunteers and possibly some students. Once the code starts to shape up it would be nice to see contributions from some of these other groups
Mar 05 20:01:14 lossyrob: I think clarification around the roles of the catalog developers and the processing nodes would be beneficial.
Mar 05 20:01:59 lossyrob: The catalog component deals with displaying imagery, which will require some processing. So it's unclear about what the separation should be.
Mar 05 20:02:37 Cristiano: Roles for the catalog development is pretty much what's in the tech challenge, then it will be defined with proposals
Mar 05 20:02:54 Cristiano: I don't think there needs to be much processing in the catalog development
Mar 05 20:03:18 Cristiano: it's mainly just calling existing CSWs and TMSs, right?
Mar 05 20:03:27 lossyrob: If users are starting with RGB geotiffs which are orthorectified, if we want to display it on a web map, there needs to be reprojection and possibly tiling
Mar 05 20:03:41 lossyrob: which is pretty light treatment. but also specifically what the processing node is set to do
Mar 05 20:04:41 lossyrob: also it's unclear to me whether, after tiling, those tiles would be held on the suppliers servers (or S3 bucket, or some URI owned by them), or if OAM is hosting those tiles.
Mar 05 20:04:48 Cristiano: but yes, once we have the first prototype processing node, all developers will need to work together to ...make catalog and nodes talk to each other
Mar 05 20:05:10 lossyrob: but in the local catalog case, if you place an RGB GeoTiff into the catalog, some processing has to be done to make that servable and discoverable by something like Libra
Mar 05 20:05:43 Cristiano: I believe it could be both, remote and local tiles, so it should be build to support both cases
Mar 05 20:06:48 lossyrob: surely.
Mar 05 20:07:23 Cristiano: But again, we are open to discussion and ...proposals :) The local tile cache is kinda a strict requirement for the use case of field deployments
Mar 05 20:07:40 lossyrob: how so?
Mar 05 20:08:19 Cristiano: Disconnected OAM that needs to serve imagery to a LAN team for mapping
Mar 05 20:08:48 lossyrob: GeoTiffs would need to be served up in the local case, so tiled and reprojected for web maps....in the remote case, where it's supplier hosted data, the supplier might host RGB GeoTiff imagery, but not actually want to tile it up for serving, so not sure who does and hosts those tiles
Mar 05 20:09:09 lossyrob: but for the local catalog case, it just has to do some light processing (reproject, tile) to serve it up locally, without need for connection
Mar 05 20:09:18 lossyrob: or across a LAN.
Mar 05 20:09:54 lossyrob: Sorry, my original point was, I guess I'm just unclear about the distinction between the Catalog and Processing roles, since I see the catalog would necessarily do some processing for display purposes.
Mar 05 20:10:01 Cristiano: Any OAM node that can afford tiling and hosting will do
Mar 05 20:10:21 lossyrob: That would exclude something like...the Landsat data held on S3
Mar 05 20:10:33 Cristiano: I would keep those roles separate and let them communicate through API functions
Mar 05 20:10:37 lossyrob: they are already paying for hosting all the RGB imagery....hosting the tile set is another thing, and requires some CPUs
Mar 05 20:11:15 lossyrob: ok, that makes sense as far as keeping them modular.
Mar 05 20:12:12 Cristiano: OK, unless there's anything else, I'd like to wrap up
Mar 05 20:12:40 lossyrob: is there a plan for those attending FOSS4G NA to meet up?
Mar 05 20:12:41 Cristiano: Have fun those going to FOSS4GNA
Mar 05 20:12:50 Cristiano: That would be nice
Mar 05 20:13:05 Cristiano: Unfortunately I have other travel plans and can't make it
Mar 05 20:13:11 nhv: there should be birds of a feather boards
Mar 05 20:13:31 nhv: someone just has to reserve a spot
Mar 05 20:13:42 lossyrob: Ok. If someone gets an idea together post the the list so we can all meet up!
Mar 05 20:13:45 FrankW: lossyrob: I'd at least love to chat and hopefully we can find a few others.
Mar 05 20:13:58 FrankW: I clearly need a catch-up backgrounder on the project. :-)
Mar 05 20:14:13 lossyrob: You and me both :)
Mar 05 20:14:49 lossyrob: Great, well I'll be around the whole conference, so I'll try to schedule a time or look for someone who as done the same
Mar 05 20:14:59 Cristiano: that would be great FrankW. Can you reserve a Bof spot?
Mar 05 20:15:17 FrankW: Hmm, I'm pretty organizationally challenged. Perhaps lossyrob could?
Mar 05 20:15:18 nhv: FrankW if you get the chance corner mlucas to attending any meetup
Mar 05 20:15:25 FrankW: nhv: good idea
Mar 05 20:15:35 lossyrob: as far as I can tell all BOF spots are taken on the schedule
Mar 05 20:15:35 Cristiano: Hopefully Alex will be there too, and I know Jeff Johnson will Sun-Wed
Mar 05 20:15:38 nhv: he is aware
Mar 05 20:15:42 nhv: of this project
Mar 05 20:15:43 lossyrob: let me talk to Andrew and see if there's space for us
Mar 05 20:16:20 lossyrob: and I'll shout out if I can find a time and a place
Mar 05 20:16:22 nhv: and I strongly suggest anyone with the time attending the OSSIM talk
Mar 05 20:16:31 lossyrob: nhv, that talk was declined.
Mar 05 20:16:35 nhv: oops
Mar 05 20:16:42 lossyrob: yeah, didn't make the cut...sorry!
Mar 05 20:16:48 lossyrob: too many good talks this year
Mar 05 20:16:55 Cristiano: Great, thanks guys, I look forward to hear any post conference report
Mar 05 20:17:11 lossyrob: thanks Cristiano!
Mar 05 20:17:38 Cristiano: I will let you know by the end of today how many proposals we received and about extending for another week
Mar 05 20:17:46 Cristiano: Thanks everyone!
Mar 05 20:18:11 BlakeGirardot: Cheers