<div class="gmail_quote">Thank you very much for your consideration to become a member of the OSGeo Board.<div><br></div><div>I have been involved with the community that came to be OSGeo since working on the planning committee for The MapServer Users Meeting in Minnesota in 2005 (the immediate predecessor to the FOSS4G conference) and helping to found the Twin Cities MapServer Users Group (now a local OSGeo chapter) with the others who were involved in planning that conference. I have been the OSGeo Public Geospatial Data Committee chair since 2007. It is my experience with that committee that leads me to want to work more strategically with the OSGeo Board.</div>
<div><br></div><div>The Geospatial Data Committee has been largely ineffective and dormant throughout it's existence. The importance of geodata has always been recognized as a critical part of OSGeo leading to the formation of this committee alongside the founding of OSGeo. There have been a number of false starts at creating a central catalog on OSGeo resources. There have been loosely affiliated efforts such as the FlightGear Scenery Project and Open Aerial Map take 1. The only truly successful geodata project coming directly out of OSGeo has been led not by the Geospatial Data Committee, but by the Education Committee with the set of data pulled together for educational usage. I don't see the inactivity of this group as a failure, but more as a recognition that while an absolutely critical component of using OSGeo products, there simply is not the energy within our organization to tackle everything that we would like.</div>
<div><br></div><div>I have been very excited to see the partnerships and MOUs that have been coming down the pipe recently. One critical way that we can help to prevent spreading our resources too thin that we are ineffective is to work with other like minded groups. The partnerships that we have with the OGC and now in the works with several educational groups is a great way for us to leverage the strengths and particular audiences that these other groups bring in. In particular, I think that there are significant opportunities for OSGeo to support and partner with domain-specific groups. Having worked significantly in the humanitarian/emergency response world through my involvement with the Sahana Software Foundation, OSGeo software is being heavily used throughout this domain by people and projects like Sahana, the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, CrisisMappers, and Crisis Commons. By supporting these groups through cooperation we can help more people in this domain become aware of and use OSGeo software (and correspondingly can make more OSGeo folks aware of opportunities that they may have to support these humanitarian efforts). I see additional opportunities in finding ways to work with groups that have traditionally been stovepiped. In particular there is much work being done in domains such as public transportation, aviation noise, city/county public information, large government or organization SDI. Whether through creating MOUs or informal partnerships with groups that are already supporting these domains or extending our local chapter concept to create domain users groups with mailing lists this is the key direction that I would like to push for OSGeo.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Again, thank you very much for your consideration and I look forward to seeing many of you in Denver!</div><div><br></div><div>David<br clear="all"><br>-- <br>************************************<br><font color="#888888">David William Bitner<br>
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</div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>************************************<br>David William Bitner<br>