FOSS4G Europe 2015 OSGeo Europe BOF Agenda

Agenda:

1. A European legal entity representing OSGeo
   1. SWOT Analysis concerning the foundation of an European legal structure
   2. mission of a future OSGeo Europe
2. Membership discussion: face2face continuation of the thread on the discuss list OSGeo-Discuss 2015 Charter Member elections (here! and here etc)
3. Planning of activities and goals for the industry workgroup (in relation with OSGeo Europe?)

Minutes of BOF meeting

• question from Dirk: do we need an OSGeo Europe entity?
  • another org helps to act as legal entity to deal with more local projects
  • lobby in Europe specifically
• Helena: how does this relate to OSGeo?
• Maxi: there are already other OSGeo local chapters as legal entities
• Alessandro: not aware of this, in the Italian community. Do we need a legal entity, or just a more organized movement along existing chapters
• Kari: Finnish chapter in formation. Organizing workshops are costly to organize on own, so external funding could help.

• do we need a structure to decide about next OSGeo-Europe hosting decision
  • do we focus on European funding
  • other things to discuss first

• Arnulf: legal entities already exist.

• Jeff: focus on what we are good at (building open software). Hesitate to force funding issues on a 100% volunteer organization (OSGeo Europe or OSGeo global).

• Robin: look at leveraging other orgs in our space.

Description

OSGeo legal structure

I think it is important to create a European legal structure representing OSGeo in Europe, to be able to speak as one voice, and as a legal entity representing OSGeo values to the EU Administration, industry and R&D institutions. OSGeo Europe should give support to OSGeo in lobbying European Union Institutions (Commission, Parliament, etc) related to specific EU-Themes (INSPIRE, H2020, Procurement policy, ...) It can act as an entity to manage H2020 projects, etc... (from the preconference meeting of Geo4All on Tuesday July 14, Como): Osgeo could play a role in encouraging and should be issued by OSGeo. Also here OSGeo-EU legal structure can play a role for Europe.

Planning of activities and goals of the [industry] workgroup

I believe in eco-systems. A system where all the entities are acting in an equal important role in a whole system. Wednesday July 15, I have a presentation: " HOW OPEN SOURCE AND INSPIRE CAN BE USED AS A TACTICAL WEAPON FOR ECONOMICAL GROWTH IN EUROPE" where I want to start a discussion about using open source and open source licenses to support an ecosystem and get more impact as a network of SME's. I think openness to other parts of the eco-system is very important. Bring the different stakeholders together.

The membership discussion.

It is a yearly returning topic about the elections of the charter members and the board. Should there be a membership fee, and/or should we have charter members, where it is not clear that we have a charter. During this topic we have the chance to discuss face2face about this theme.