Italiano Chapter Report 2007

Italiano Local Chapter

• Period covered by report: Jan-Dec 2007
• Contact name: Massimiliano Cannata --Maxi71 11:55, 22 February 2008 (EST)

Key Accomplishments

• “back office”/administrative management
• Wiki, IRC, mailing list set up and maintain
• productions of howto, help ecc.
• created a debian.gfoss.it package
• ECDL freeGIS, (The European Computer Driving License (ECDL) is the European-wide qualification demonstrating competence in computer skills.)
• works on open geodata
  • elaboration Italian toponimi ISTAT database
  • participation to petition and license definition
• Support to mapping parties initiatives (Pavia, Arezzo, ...)
• Extension of network contact (OpenStreetMap, Italian PostgreSQL User Group)
• Public relations
  • presence in the press (radio, journals)
  • developed presentation material (flyer, presentation layout, Youtube spot, gadgets)
• started the population of the Italian web service on FOSS4G users (mapserver, grass, pmapper, etc...)

Areas for Improvement

• try to set up a more effective decision making processes, with activity areas and teams

Opportunities to Help

• having educational material, courses and tutorial for the different OSGeo project, in order to organize workshops at the Italiano annual meeting and disseminate OSGeo products

Outlook for 2008

• 2008 will be the year of promotion.

In Feb. 2007 we start the set up the Italian association gfoss.it and we had to manage many administrative aspects. Then we worked on organization task, in order to set up rules and procedures (members, sponsors, site, etc.). In Sept. 2007 we became the "Italiano official Chapter".

The next year will be dedicated in promoting OSGeo projects trough italian geo community and administrative offices.

• 2008 Italiano OSGeo meeting.

We are working to organize the first OSGeo/gfoss.it meeting, in addition to the historical Italian GRASS user meeting.

• 2008 increase number of members.

In 2007 we had a continuous positive trend in member subscriptions (30 eusros), while 300 people are subscribed to the italian gfoss user list we are currently 83 members (~25%). In the next year we hope to increase the number of members up to ~50%