United Kingdom Chapter Report 2011

Contact Name: Jo Cook

Website: http://www.osgeo.org/uk

Key Accomplishments

2011 has been a great year for the chapter. We have reached 150 members on our mailing list, up from 100 last year. We are holding regular IRC meetings, which help us stay in touch. We helped to co-host the OSGIS 2011 Conference in Nottingham, and chapter members presented at a number of other open source and geospatial events and workshops for organisations such as the AGI (Association for Geographic Information).

We have been improving the communication with chapter members and other interested parties through monthly IRC meetings and an official OSGeo:UK twitter account (@osgeouk). Members have also been busy promoting open source GIS through local Linux User Groups and other places.

We have members on the board of the new Open Source Geospatial Lab at the Centre for Geospatial Sciences in Nottingham, have two OSGeo Charter Members, and our Chapter Representative was elected as an OSGeo Director.

Areas for Improvement

We need to continue raising the profile of open source geospatial software in the UK and ensuring that we take advantage of things like the UK Governments “open agenda”. More members and more opportunities to get together are always useful!

Opportunities to Help

We are always on the lookout for new members, and new events to promote OSGeo. Join the chapter mailing list and get involved! (http://www.osgeo.org/uk/mailing_list)

Outlook for 2012

The outlook for 2012 is good. Our main focus is our bid to host FOSS4G in the UK in 2013, which we are very excited about (update- success- we are hosting FOSSG 2013). We are also hoping to organise a joint event with Ordnance Survey, and to continue our strong association with the AGI and the University of Nottingham. We hope to continue to gather more case studies (http://www.osgeo.org/uk/case_studies) about exemplar uses of open source geospatial software, and increase our membership to 200 people. We also wish to attract more companies to be part of the local chapter, and are investigating potential sponsorship options.