Great discussion so far and perfect timing for us in Cleveland, we're having our first event of 2013 tomorrow. http://www.meetup.com/cleveland-civic-hacking/members/23087451/
Given Cleveland's population relative to other cities, our mutual interests and the sheer overlap between OSM and open source GIS tools (QGIS, postGIS, Tilemill, cartodb, etc), other co-organizers and I thought it would be a great fit for our user group to focus on both OSM and FOSSGIS/Open Geospatial tools. (Personally, I think this synergy is really useful: one feature of OSM that deserves to be emphasized more is being able to use that data in really neat ways - maps, visualization, analysis, etc - that you couldn't do with google maps). Some things that we've run into, could need help on: We haven't thought of a name yet (related to above): Open Geo ? Open geo-spatial ? Open Gis ? OSM/FOSSGIS ? Naturally, I'm also soliciting suggestions at tomorrow's meeting. Semi-related: call ourselves a user group ? Community ? IMHO, user group, to me, has a negative connotation of a bunch of old white guys sitting around (ala GNU, BSD) and not interacting with other communities in their area. I guess this (determining a name) sort of also relates to what actually we'll be doing... I crafted a very crude mission statement a few days ago (on our wiki page), but a mission statement is something that should be developed by the group , and refine itself organically as activities go on . How often to hold meetings ? I'm thinking bi-monthly, regularly scheduled would be a really good fit. We had 3 events last year although not on a regular basis and it was definitely noticeable of a loss of momentum after the first 2. Agree with Serge on his point. In other organizations that I've led or participated, it is much easier to maintain momentum by having regularly scheduled meetings. That said, this is a problem experienced by other organizations that I've participated/led in and I've already had 3 state their interest but unable to attend due to a conflict. So we may rotate the day of the week, but keep the same week. Should we as a group choose something to work on ? One thing that I've noticed from last year's meetings and HOT: there were a few users who saw OSM to help them reach a particular goal or scratch their itch of a particular interest (verifying roads to facilitate routing, mapping all of the places of worship in an area, etc) and began mapping that but there were others who were interested but, for lack of a better word, were overwhelmed of what to begin mapping and where. (As I type this out, I'm thinking to suggest to them tomorrow to map out a few restaurants/bars or other POIs in their neighborhood). Has any other OSMers encountered this in their users group ? Should we focus on a particular topic, (after soliciting suggestions from members) ? I'm likely going to use JOSM to walk them through their first edits. I've used JOSM at past meetings in Cleveland (most of our attendees in the past have been relatively technically savvy) and while in Senegal for HOT. iD is a couple months away (?!) from being able to be used in this context. However, Potlatch's emphasis (on documentation, maintenance) is likely to decrease (maybe not, I'm just basing this on my impressions) soon as well. Interested to hear what others have done or planning to do. Lastly, when I first started using OSM a couple years ago, I was really frustrated by a few terms that were sometimes unique to OSM, sometimes used in other areas of GIS) that appeared convoluted (some of them were just a result of British English being used) or went into overwrought, technical detail, or were simply outdated. So, I'm preparing a cheat sheet that very briefly describe these terms, in less technical language. Aimed to be a supplement to people who may not have a laptop or smart phone with them and just want a brief reminder what these terms mean as they make their first edits, hear them used in my presentation, discussions, or reading OSM documentation . https://gist.github.com/4614619 I encourage to fork and improve it, feedback. Regards, Will PS - I found this great overview of open-source mapping/geospatial tools by Nate Kelso - a great supplement that I plan on sharing with attendees. https://github.com/nvkelso/geo-how-to
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