[NOMINATION] Joseph Kempf (myself) #9
Description
I have looked at the list of tasks admins do.
- The person I am nominating would be able to support one or more of the items in the listed admin tasks.
The Spatial Community User You Are Nominating
Joseph Kempf
Nominating for
Self
Your Spatial Community Username
No response
Why are you nominating this person?
I’m incredibly passionate about geospatial technology and deeply value the Spatial Community. Since doing the Peace Corps, I’ve spent the last 15 years abroad investing in education and civic engagement. I truly appreciate what this community offers, and I’d love the opportunity to give back.
I must say that I don’t bring much to the table other than passion and consistency. I’m committed to fostering relationships, inclusiveness, and engagement. I really enjoy the diversity and hope to encourage a welcoming and supportive environment where everyone - regardless of background or expertise - feels encouraged to participate and contribute.
A healthy community is made up of members that call the place home - those who ask questions, share knowledge, support others, and contribute to discussions. Besides the obvious administrative tasks, I view an admin’s role as to stimulate an environment where members feel welcome, valued, and motivated to contribute by empowering others, setting a healthy tone, and nurturing a sense of ownership.
What do you currently like about the community?
I like that it is “global” and would like to see that aspect develop. I live overseas and there are not that many geospatial professionals in my region, so an open online community is pivotal for me to stay connected and engaged. I’m not a big fan of social media and let’s just say that the Spatial Community has something special that other online geospatial communities on more traditional social media clearly lack, especially in terms of depth and authenticity. The career discussions are engaging and incredibly helpful to me as I’m just starting out. I consistently learn something new and insightful from the channels I visit, and I deeply value the sense of genuine connection here. I must say that I most value the personal relationships that this community has helped facilitate. There are countless people that I never would have met if it weren’t for this Slack and I’m grateful for the opportunity to continue learning and growing alongside such a supportive group.
What would you consider changing about the community, if anything?
I’m coming at this as someone who is still quite new to both this community and GIS/geospatial. I don’t have answers, but I certainly have questions. :)
It goes without saying that any community is in a constant state of change. There may be a lot going on on the internal side of things, but the outward-facing components of the community don’t quite reflect it.
Just think of how people might find out about this community. For better or worse, it seems to me that there are very few outward-facing components of the community. Try doing a web search for “The Spatial Community.” Perhaps it’s just me but besides thespatialcommunity.org/ and this GitHub, the only other thing that was connected to this community was an X profile!?
Perhaps we could do better if we are intentionally seeking to grow. I did a search on Mastodon and BlueSky, Reddit and LinkedIn. Again, perhaps it’s just me, but I didn’t find much.
How did you find out about the Spatial Community? For me it was by word of mouth and completely by chance. The funny part is that I had actually come across the Spatial Community website much earlier and the first time I had figured that it wasn’t worth requesting to join due to the fact that all the references were to AMAs from 2015-2018 and I assumed the community was completely dead!
All of that to say that perhaps a more persistent and up-to-date outward-facing component (whether that is updating the current website or developing something such as a Discourse) might be a useful addition to Slack and I would also love to help with that however it may look. I absolutely love Slack, but it was the first time that I used it when I joined and it took a while to figure out what channels are actually used and which ones are dead, especially given the 90-day limit on history.
I think community surveys would help clarify a lot of things. It isn’t a bad idea to make a map of where current members are located.
Which of the listed admin tasks would you be most able to support?
- Plan additional fun community events
- Community survey
- Maintain an active presence in the community to welcome new people
- Considering channel structure
- Maintain a community archive
- Deploying a new community Discourse site
- Coordinating with other spatial groups to create a healthy and independent community of spatial professionals
- Send account invites to join the community
- Remove spam, enforce code of conduct
Any other special skills or relevant experience?
Not much experience with Slack, but I do have experience with building websites.
What channels do you currently spend time in - or, what are your areas of experience?
#volunteer, #bookclub, #career-weekly-topics, #python, #postgis #duckdb #qgis #foss4g
Where in the world are you located, and what timezone are you in?
Bulgaria EET; UTC+02:00
World Time Buddy