[Qgis-user] Organizing a US / North American User Group

[Jeffrey Johnson]

Having a separate list isn't so critical. That said, the intention was
to use it to discuss organizing local events rather than for general
knowledge/questions which should go to this list.

Alex, your point about splitting mindshare is well taken and you do
nail the one point which is that we are finding that QGIS is kind of a
hook to get people into FOSS4G that otherwise might not be interested.
So having a QGIS Specific 'User Group' makes sense to get people
involved who might otherwise be overwhelmed by the full scope of
FOSS4G groups. I do think it makes sense to generally try to organize
local events around the dates of the other events you mention. Thats
the idea for this first one before State of the Map in DC.

Jeff

On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 8:03 AM, Pedro Machado Monteiro
<pedromachadomonteiro at gmail.com> wrote:
> I agree with Alex, about the mailing list; splitting lists = splitting and
> losing knowledge, information and solutions;
>
> Best regards
>
> Pedro Monteiro
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> 2014-01-28 Alex Mandel <tech_dev at wildintellect.com>
>>
>> On 01/22/2014 02:01 PM, Jeffrey Johnson wrote:
>> > I setup a quick google spreadsheet to collect emails in lieu of a
>> > mailing list for now.
>> >
>> >
>> > https://docs.google.com/a/boundlessgeo.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AishiXFd06bHdGl4ZE92Y09TbkU1TVBKTm8zMmNmZmc&usp=drive_web#gid=0
>> >
>> > On Wed, Jan 22, 2014 at 12:50 PM, Jeffrey Johnson
>> > <jjohnson at boundlessgeo.com> wrote:
>> >> Hi Folks,
>> >>
>> >> It seems like a good time to get a US / North American User Group
>> >> going since there has been a serious uptick in interest in QGIS on
>> >> this side of the Atlantic. I've talked to quite a few people privately
>> >> about this, but figured now is the time to bring it to the wider user
>> >> community.
>> >>
>> >> So, my employer (Boundless Geo) would like to help organize an
>> >> inaugural User Group Meeting on April 11th, the day before the State
>> >> of the Map Conference in Washington DC. This seems like a good
>> >> opportunity to get everyone together when lots of spatially minded
>> >> people will be in town. The consensus is that we could arrange space
>> >> in the District during the day and have a happy hour nearby that
>> >> night.
>> >>
>> >> I'm not sure what the procedure is for organizing a User Group (or if
>> >> there even is one), but we can take on the tasks of setting up a
>> >> mailing list, website etc. If the PSC can let us know what hoops we
>> >> should jump through, or things we should think about, please let us
>> >> know. We will be reaching out to lots of people who are very excited
>> >> about QGIS but haven't really joined the community and try to get the
>> >> involved.
>> >>
>>
>> There really isn't a procedure that I've seen. I think most people are
>> served by local user groups of FOSS or GIS origin. North America might
>> even be too big of a geographic area for what many traditionally call a
>> user group. I see a good role being to help ensure Birds of a
>> Feather/Local meets whenever good related conferences roll into town:
>> FOSS4G, FOSS4GNA, NACIS, State of the Map, URISA (e.g. WAURISA, CalGIS)
>> etc...
>>
>> Note the comparison in the EU is the hackfests which is really a lot of
>> developers and power users getting together to work on QGIS.
>>
>> >> Please contact me off-list if you are interested in helping with this
>> >> effort and as soon as we get a mailing list going I'll follow up with
>> >> a link here.
>> >>
>> >> Hoping to see some of you in DC in April!
>> >>
>> >> Jeff
>>
>> My personal opinion is that beyond meetups coinciding with other confs,
>> and possibly organizing QGIS hackfests (can be user oriented) that most
>> other functions of such a group overlap either with QGIS' existing
>> infrastructure (e.g. do we really need our own mailing list since the
>> main QGIS ones are in English except to discuss regional events?) or
>> OSGeo chapters.
>>
>> Guess I'm mostly hesitant about splitting the FOSS4G community
>> mindshare, I don't use QGIS in isolation and never would (unlike some
>> monolithic software packages), so to me leaving out Postgis, Spatialite,
>> GRASS, (Everything else in Processing) kinda misses the mark.
>>
>> But I do get the notion that some things simplified can be more
>> attractive to a general audience (ie hook in the QGIS users out there
>> somehow).
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Alex
>> _______________________________________________
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>> Qgis-user at lists.osgeo.org
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