There is a movement at the moment on the FOSS4G Oceania mailing list, https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/foss4g-oceania/, by the group who organised the recent FOSS4G SotM Oceania conference, looking to get a bit more organised through some kind of governance and organisation structure.
Their proposal is to setup an OSGeo Oceania entity against the terms of reference at https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/foss4g-oceania/attachments/20181214/f7637cbb/attachment-0001.pdf The rationale behind this originally stemmed from a desire for an organisation to run our regional joint FOSS4G and SotM conference, but the proposal is for "Its purpose is to foster the growth of the geospatial open source & open data community in the Oceania region, including the oversight and stewardship of a FOSS4G & SotM Conference series." The proposed OSGeo Oceania entity would be similar to the German FOSSGIS eV https://www.fossgis.de/ which is both the German OSMF Local Chapter and the Open Source Geospatial organisation. The OSGeo Oceania terms of reference explicitly state the intention to become an OSMF Local Chapter https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Local_Chapters, so I feel it's important the whole community here is aware and has the opportunity to get involved. Personally I think a local chapter is a good thing, it can be used to foster the growth of OpenStreetMap within Australia, New Zealand and the pacific islands. On my personal wish list: 1. Set up a local HOT Tasking Manager to be used locally for all kinds of mapping coordination, including post disaster 2. LGA level extracts, this will hopefully make OSM data even more accessible by local government and help promote OpenStreetMap within local government 3. Take control of openstreetmap.org.au though the OpenStreetMap trademark in Australia that OSMF holds 4. A rendering of the OSM Carto style but showing indigenous names. 5. Provide a contact point for government I have concerns too: 1. Have we reached out to the pacific islands OpenStreetMap community? If we're starting a Local Chapter that includes them, they need to be involved in it. (This email is one step to try to get the Australian and New Zealand communities involved) 2. An OSMF Local Chapter for our region should have the goal to foster the growth of the OpenStreetMap project within our region. In my opinion this should include supporting OpenStreetMap within proprietary software and services, so long as in line with the OpenStreetMap license. A joint OSGeo Oceania should be okay with supporting OpenStreetMap and even promoting it together with non free and open source geospatial software. 3. Funding and money. Funds could be raised through individual memberships like OSMF and organisation supporters/sponsors. At the moment the OSGeo Oceania terms of reference don't go into that detail, it's mostly around running the conference. I'm unsure how the funds raised would flow into funds distributed, would a sponsor or member be able to choose if they want their contribution allocated towards just OpenStreetMap, just free and open source software, or both? What about at a country level? _______________________________________________ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au