Ottawa Chapter/Admin/meetings/072006

Location
DM Solutions' office

Attendees
Dave Sampson Jeff McKenna Frank Warmerdam Peter Brimacombe Debbie Pagurek Dave McIlhagga Shawn Barnes Yewondwossen Assefa Zak James Girma Gebrehana Mark Sunohara Robert Roberts Paul Spencer Dave Howlett Christy Nieman Regie Alam Richard Alam Grahame Cole Pedram Karimi Mike Adair Scott Mitchell Peter Pulsifer Jean-Francois Doyon Xiaoyuan Geng

Project Representation
GRASS MapServer Mapbuilder

Introductions

 * round table introductions
 * diverse backgrounds, including government, private, academic, NGOs, contractors, general interest
 * background on Ottawa GRASS users group (OGUG) by Dave Sampson
 * background on Ottawa MapServer users group (OMSUG) by Jeff McKenna
 * background on Mapbuilder project by Mike Adair

OSGeo Foundation Background
Frank Warmerdam, the president of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGF), gave some background on the foundation:
 * OSGF now gives member projects credibility
 * OSGF is a common vehicle for open source geospatial projects
 * projects and members have a stronger voice in the corporate world

Frank also discussed the possible benefits of creating a local chapter:
 * builds interest in the groups, and can sustain longer
 * as part of the umbrella organization, the groups gain instant credibility
 * chapter can use and build on the existing OSGF infrastructure (site, wiki, mailing lists etc.)

OGUG Background
Dave Sampson gave some backgound on the Ottawa GRASS users group:
 * currently packaging a new GRASS [https://ottawa.osgeo.org/servlets/ProjectDocumentList?folderID=86