North America Regional

Mission

The primary focus of the North America regional charter will be to organize and run annual North American conferences. It is not the intent of this chapter to duplicate or compete with established local chapters or the international organization's ongoing efforts.

The North America regional conference will also support and collaborate with other like minded organizations for smaller technical and business focused conferences within the region.

Background The OSGeo Board of Directors has recently discussed establishing regional focus groups and conferences that could more effectively address the needs of those areas. This would allow OSGeo to act as more of an umbrella international organization. It is anticipated that the International OSGeo conference will rotate around the globe and will be combined with the regional conference when that region is selected.

Objectives

• Organize and run an annual North American regional conference
• Increased focus on open source business models
• Provide an interface for National, Regional and Local government agencies as they adopt open source solutions
• Coordinate with local North American chapters for planned events within those localities
• Support OSGeo board for international events

'What the North American Regional isn't about

• Duplicating existing efforts at the OSGeo International level or at the local chapter level
• Running development projects or support infrastructure
• Local meetups
• Managing or overseeing other groups

In addition we will be coordinating closely with other relevant organizations:

• MIL-OSS Military Open Source Software
• USGIF United States Geospatial Intelligence Agency
• OSSI Open Source Software Institute
• OSFA Open Source for America

Official representative

Mark Lucas Principal Scientist RadiantBlue Technologies Inc.

If the majority of chapter members wish, the post of official representative will be elected on a periodic basis.

Organization

The intent is to organize as a 501c non profit organization.

Mailing List

http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/northamerica

Meetings and Events

No meetings have been planned yet, the intent will be to establish formal quarterly meetings to review conference and organizational planning.

Upcoming Events

FOSS4g 2012 - Beijing [1]

North American Regional OSGeo/foss4g Conference Initial discussion will be focused on organizing a follow on North American regional conference in 2012. We will work to deconflict this event with the OSGeo/foss4g international conference in Beijing as well as the as the annual Geoint conference.

USGIF Technology Day] USGIF Technology Day

Recent Events

MIL-OSS WG3 MIL-OSS Working Group 3

Geoint 2011 Geoint 2011 in San Antonio Tx

USGIF Tech Days Washington DC

People

Sign up here to show interest! Also join the mailing list so we can be in touch directly.

• User:mlucas17- Mark Lucas - Lets get this moving
• Frank Warmerdam
• Tyler Mitchell
• Dave McIlhagga
• David Bitner
• Andrew Ross
• Michael Smith
• Ned Horning
• Robert Hollingsworth

Chapter Formation Submission

In order to form a chapter, the following steps should be taken:

1. "OSGeo Chapter" should self-organize (for instance in the OSGeo wiki, via OSGeo mailing list, etc), seeking to determine if a critical mass of interest exists to justify a chapter.
2. "OSGeo Chapter" should prepare a mission and objectives indicating the scope of the planned chapter (geographic or linquistic extent for instance).
3. “OSGeo Chapter” should propose an official representative to liaise with the OSGeo Board. If accepted by the board, the representative will be an officer of OSGeo.
4. “OSGeo Chapter” should submit an official expression of interest to form a chapter to the OSGeo board, listing initial members, mission, representative and other supporting information.
5. The OSGeo board shall then consider passing a motion forming the chapter, and designating the liason officer.

In considering the formation of new OSGeo chapters, the board will consider issues including:

• Does the mandate (geographically or linguistically) conflict with other existing chapters or chapters-in-formation?
• Does the chapter appear to have sufficient interest to justify official formation?
• Does the chapter appear to be open to broad membership, and representative of the target geographic or linguistic community? (eg. if a chapter had the objective to cover all Spanish speakers, it would be inappropriate if the only interest demonstrated was from one country)