Member Meeting FOSS4GNA 2018

This member meeting is scheduled for 14 May 2018 as part of the FOSS4G-NA conference. A [bird-of-a-feather session has been reserved for Monday evening before the social ice-breaker event.

Time / Location

• http://foss4g-na.org
• Monday 2018-05-14 18:00 bird-of-feather, AV equipment will be available but is not the focus of the space

Questions:

• Jody Garnett

Agenda for FOSS4G NA Member Meeting

We would like to have a discussion on OSGeo topics for an hour. Afterwards we would like to invite you to the icebreaker event for a drink and continue the discussion socially.

1. Welcome to OSGeo in 2018
2. Diversity in our Community
3. Challenges to OSGeo success in North America
4. (Please add ideas to this list)

Our president is running this meeting, format may be subject to change depending on numbers attending.

About the idea of OSGeo Member Meetings

The OSGeo board would like to invite you to participate in one of the "Member Meetings" being scheduled 2018:

• OSGeo Code Sprint 2018 in Bonn (Member Meeting 19. March 2018)
• FOSS4G North America
• FOSS4G Europe
• FOSS4G Dar es Salaam
• FOSS4G Asia

We would love a chance to talk with you and hope you can attend one of the above events. This is a great possibility to come together with the charter members, to discuss and to get to know each other.

At FOSS4G Europe 2017 we had a wonderful board meeting, that many members were able to attend, resulting in a great discussion. We would like to build on this experience for 2018 and invite you to a member meeting at an event near you.

Un-meeting Topics

We would like to have a discussion on OSGeo topics for about an hours. Afterwards we would like to invite you for a drink and continue the discussion socially.

Topics set by those present, ideas to consider:

• Can I have a sticker
• What is going on?
• Ways to get involved?
• What is the difference between charter members and members?
• What is expected for charter members?
• Members vs members vs members?
• Committee Health and Happiness
• What OSGeo stack do you use?
• What non OSGeo stack do you use?
• Set up new local chapter?
• OSGeo.US Update? How did it go today ...
• Difference between OSGeo and OGC?

• (Please add ideas to this list)

Our vice-president Helena is running this meeting, format may be subject to change depending on numbers attending.

Update: Following bonn member meeting example the "un-meeting" format is setup with post-it notes on a whiteboard, questions and answer format (with volunteers stepping up to answer questions).

Discussion

Initial chat OSGeo discussion is back and forth:

• member driven?
• opportunities arise (example from partner collaboration)

What is going on

We have more then we are able to communicate:

• discuss is being a bit quiet, board list is being quiet, but geoforall is overwhelming
• Two projects have graduated (prywps and osgeolive) but no news items yet :(
• gdalbarn.com - being announced this week

What is expected for charter members?

The only expectation is voting!

• CRO can no longer maintain the list, going to have to ask charter members to create a profile on the website!

Discussion:

• We are losing people moving from wiki to website
• We should contact charter members and ask them to update the entry!

Update:

• SAC is migrating from Wiki to LDAP, and may automate some stuff

OSGeo Local Chapter Update

• Set up new local chapter?
• OSGeo.US Update? How did it go today ...

Update:

• Guido is making use of not-for-profit
• wiki page!
• meet with IRC with board, did not have enough members :)
• email list setup!
• https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OSGeoUS

Ideas from todays meeting:

• Consider taking leading role in FOSS4GNA in 2019?
• Push more US, perhaps attend state governments?
• Need for US government to engage with someone?

Randy's initial experiments show a real pent up demand.

Is anything happening at AGU I have a presentation?

Ideas:

• Helena would like to have a booth, find out who is going!
• Perhaps we could do an open source session at the AGU meeting?

Can I have a sticker

Yes they are on the table

What is the difference between charter members and members?

• Participant: Taking part in our community, example email list communication. Around 30k unique subscribers.
• Member: Self proclaim on wiki or OSGeo :)
• Charter Member: voting member who added each year as part of a nomination process

Members vs members vs members?

We do not have a definitive count of members:

• Wiki says 1200+
• Website says 370+

See https://www.osgeo.org/about/membership-rules/

Difference between OSGeo and OGC?

• OGC: Focused on standards, interoperability between applications, preservation of data
• OSGeo software foundation, providing a hope for projects. Community focus on open geospatial (open source, open data, open standards, open education, open world :) )

Committee Health and Happiness

Some committees are kind of inactive, open geodata.