[Talk-GB] Geovation - Location information innovation grants - now open for applications

[SK53]

Hi Harry,

Sorry if I sounded over cynical!

These things have their place: but I did want to highlight that one needs
to be aware of the effort/reward ratio. Often participating is a good way
of focusing in expressing sets of ideas which may be well understood within
a community, but are poorly articulated to those outside the community. If
one enters such a competition being aware that many of the benefits are
non-financial then it is possible to get value out of the process.

An example from the past.I will always remember a bid for EU money which I
co-ordinated (including the inevitable overnight drive down the M2 &
ferry/train to Brussels to get it delivered by the deadline). I didn't
really expect us to get money: there wasn't a suitable slot in the
programme workplan. We didn't. However, some of the work we did in putting
the bid together was so successful, that a number of participants continued
as an *ad hoc* group holding workshops to continue developing & sharing
ideas.

Jerry

On 16 February 2016 at 13:01, Harry Wood <mail at harrywood.co.uk> wrote:

> I have mixed feelings about Geovation
>
> You're talking very generally about consultants getting money, but there's
> a bigger reason to feel negative about it. The government paid Ordnance
> Survey £millions to release open data (because releasing open data needs to
> cost lots of money because... well no it doesn't) And then to show
> something for the money O.S. run the Geovation programme.  At the same time
> the government looked at the other open geodata initiative to come out of
> the UK, and gave a small donation of a few million to OpenStreetMap
> ...except I just imagined that last part.
>
> Of course that didn't happen. But I hope eventually something like that
> could happen. We'd have to present ourselves as something other than a
> "just"* a rag-tag bunch of volunteers. I hope maybe setting up an OSMUK
> organisation could allow us to get into a more grant/funding-receiving
> position
>
> There's not much point moaning about the injustice of the situation. It's
> the world we live in. Lots of money moves around for things like map data.
> Even open map data.
>
> Instead we might ask ourselves how we might get some of it. Geovation is
> then an opportunity. At least they're throwing some crumbs of money out
> there, and engaging with developers. This gives us an in-road. We can talk
> to the same developers about using OpenStreetMap. Maybe we can actually get
> the geovation folks to promote OpenStreetMap. Sounds strange, but those
> particular people are concerned with promoting use of open geo-data and
> getting the illusive "innovation" happening. And we do have alternative
> data offerings e.g. POIS and worldwide coverage. I actually want to get
> into conversations with O.S. about how they should *offer* OSM data as part
> of their data product sets. In the short term maybe we could pick up some
> of these crumbs of funding to use as a leg-up in building OSMUK somehow.
>
> One tiny step in this direction so far. They hosted a hack weekend last
> summer. We can get little bits of value like that out of them. We should do
> that again.
>
> Harry
>
> * "just" in inverted commas because of course the OpenStreetMap community
> got where we are today as a rag-tag bunch of volunteers, and actually every
> time we talk about being something else we have to try not lose our souls
>
> ________________________________
> From: SK53 <sk53.osm at gmail.com>
> To: Killyfole and District Development Association <
> webmaster at killyfole.org.uk>
> Cc: "Talk-GB at openstreetmap.org" <talk-gb at openstreetmap.org>
> Sent: Monday, 15 February 2016, 19:44
> Subject: Re: [Talk-GB] Geovation - Location information innovation grants
> - now open for applications
>
>
>
> I hadn't even thought of the travel side tbh! Faily glaring when its
> pointed out!
>
> This type of competition for a grant or similar has become increasingly
> common. I think Nottingham spent £500,000 to try & win a slot as a venue
> for England's wonderfully successful World Cup bid, and the local Wildlife
> Trust has pitched for a few (e.g., for revamping Sherwood Forest visitor
> centre).
>
> I rather suspect they're a decent source of fee income for the sundry
> consultants and judges necessary for running them. Also like most
> grantsmanship the idea is that you use money from your last grant to help
> bid for the second (e.g., by scheduling grant-funded travel to coincide
> with next round bid meetings).
>
> Jerry
>
>
>
> On 15 February 2016 at 19:33, Killyfole and District Development
> Association <webmaster at killyfole.org.uk> wrote:
>
> I think you are quite right Jerry, looks like participants are expected to
> >travel to London?!?  Thats one way to keep the numbers down and limit it
> to
> >the South East England area!
> >
> >On Monday 15 February 2016 17:23:37 SK53 wrote:
> >> I think most folk on this list are fairly familiar with these: they've
> been
> >> running for quite a few years. I think CycleStreets participated in one
> of
> >> them a while back. My general impression is that the cost of
> participating
> >> is often non-trivial in comparison with the potential reward.
> >>
> >> Jerry
> >
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> >Talk-GB mailing list
> >Talk-GB at openstreetmap.org
> >https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Talk-GB mailing list
> Talk-GB at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
>
> _______________________________________________
> Talk-GB mailing list
> Talk-GB at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-gb/attachments/20160216/15b71baa/attachment-0001.html>