Boston User Group

Currently canvassing community to determine level of interest in regular meetings of a Boston area OSGeo users group.

Sent email to:

• MassGIS Web Services Mailing List
• Geomancers mailing list

Positive responses:

• Allan Doyle
• Guido Stein

Email sent:

I'm Christopher Schmidt, a charter member of the Open Source Geospatial   
Foundation. (This title basically just means I'm a participant that       
people recognize the name of ;) I'm also a core developer for             
OpenLayers, and the maintainer of http://boston.freemap.in/, which is an  
online map built using MassGIS data.  As part of an effort to seek out    
Open Source Geo people in the Boston area, I'm canvassing the local       
community for interest in a regular open source geospatial interest       
group meeting.                                                            
                                                                         
For those of you who don't know, OSGeo is a non-profit organization       
which is seeking to fulfill an umbrella organizational role for a number  
of Open Source Geospatial software projects, including projects like      
GeoServer and OpenLayers. It is currently entering its third year of      
operation, and has a number of projects undergoing incubation currently   
to become "OSGeo projects", including everything from uDig and QGIS to    
GRASS to GeoServer.                                                       
                                                                         
The goal of having regular meetings would be:                             
 * Create Networking oppourtunities: allow users of open source           
   geo software to meet with creators of open source geo software where   
   possible.                                                              
 * Share knowledge: meetings could have a presentation from a particular  
   person on everything from how to use a certain tool, to types of data  
   available, to anything else.                                           
 * "Chill out": spend social time with other like-minded individuals --   
   either users of open source geosoftware, or just people interested     
   in learning more about it.                                             
                                                                         
Essentially, I personally envision this as being very similar to a Linux  
Users Group meeting: go someplace, here a 45 minute presentation with 15  
minutes of questions on a particular related topic, then head out, get    
beers someplace, and relax.                                               
                                                                         
If such a thing were to take place in the Bostonish area, would anyone on 
this list be interested in attending? Anything in particular that         
strikes your interest?                                                    
                                                                         
Looking forward to hearing from anyone interested in creating a local     
group of OS Geosoftware users...