[Board] Dec 06-Jan07 Executive Director Update

[Tyler Mitchell]

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Dear Board,
Please find attached a summary of journal since my last update Dec  
15, 2006.  I've supplied a line item breakdown of major project areas  
and secondary categories of the kinds of work I've been doing.

The following top four major categories of work give a give feel for  
what I have accomplished during the latter half of December through  
to today.

= Systems =
The most pressing event of 2006/2007 was the migration of OSGeo  
infrastructure off of CollabNet and onto OSGeo managed hardware/ 
systems.  With the full time help of Shawn Barnes (donated time from  
Autodesk) and Kanhaiya Kale (donated time from Frank Warmerdam), this  
transition was a success.   The transition was relatively smooth and  
because it was done during the quietest time of the year, it had  
minimal impact on our operations.

I spent about 33% of my time working with them, particularly over  
Christmas/New Years, to get content migrated and services set up.   
This involved a wide variety of technical tasks including: setting up  
mailing lists, archiving old content from CN site, setting up the  
Drupal CMS, adding/creating custom components for the web site,  
testing backup systems, meeting with the team and more.  The rest of  
the team worked on these and more items as well.

The administration of these new systems and services has been  
gradually moved over into the OSGeo System Administration Committee,  
with some remaining web issues remaining for the Web Committee to  
discuss later this week.

= Communications =
About 22% of my time has been spent responding to miscellaneous email  
discussion threads and, in particular, dialoguing with the community  
regarding the system migration changes.  This is general  
communication about OSGeo to the outside world and to the membership- 
at-large through email, blogs or IRC.  Some of this also bleeds into  
the VisCom - Event Planning category below as well.

I had some interaction with the various pending local chapters  
including Italian, French, Australia.  Also some communication with  
Japan re: translation of website into Japanese.  These will be the  
key to getting dedicated multi-lingual support on our website.

One notable item of communication was that of answering questions  
from the Quantum GIS (QGIS) project steering committee.  Many have  
been watching QGIS to see if it will seek to join OSGeo.  Last  
November they held a community poll asking whether they should  
approach OSGeo to become a member project.  Out of almost 300  
entries, the results for 92% Yes or Maybe and 7% No.  Their PSC came  
up with several questions, mainly around how project sponsorships  
work.  I have addressed their questions and after some positive user  
discussions it is highly likely they will be submitting an  
application to the incubator.

I believe QGIS would be a great addition to OSGeo, tying into our  
projects and others - they have successfully integrated PostGIS  
editing, GDAL/OGR data access, GRASS tool access and are aiming to  
integrate capabilities from OSSIM and improving an Export to  
MapServer feature, for example.

= WebCom =
Around 17% of my time was spent on WebCom-related activities, mostly  
associated with content migration but also including the development  
of new Drupal features, adding new content, implementing language  
translations, modifying site layout/design and more.

There are many new features about the new site, one important one was  
getting all our sponsorship pages up and running, including a summary  
of who are sponsors are.  News and Event tracking features were also  
added and the process is greatly simplified from the previous  
system.  At present I am the main contact for CMS-related issues,  
though as capacity builds in SAC, WebCom and other volunteers I  
expect this to decrease.

= VisCom - Event Planning =
About 10% of my time was spent helping organise various events  
including FOSS4G and our presence at the Open Technology/DoD/OSGeo  
Event, Location Intelligence conferences.  Discussion about Where 2.0  
is also starting.

VisCom has made some progress on having a plan for the year for  
events and required budget.  This has been outstanding for a while  
but is back on the table.  The need to consider conference and other  
events is never-ending, this could easily be a full-time job.  I  
think it is safe to safe that VisCom could use more volunteers.  As  
it is, I feel like it has been difficult to adequately help  
international local chapters due to lack of time and the language  
barrier. It would good to see VisCom better address our international  
events better, but in my opinion, that likely won't happen unless we  
have more volunteers come online.

Logos were delivered and various other branding design (i.e.  
presentation templates) are coming in the next week or two.

= Other =
Notable tasks from the remaining 15% or so of time include:
-Review of insurance needs and solutions has begun, with helpful  
input from other foundations
-Some review of 501c3 documents so far, no real progress
-Letter of support for Chris's project at TOPP
-Coordinating finances with Gary and Laura
-Posting of various sponsorship documents
-Coordinating marketing files for local chapter use
-Release of GRASS News v4 - with call for next newsletter to be  
branded OSGeo News

I am happy with our progress, but it almost feels like I've been  
solely focused on the infrastructure migration.  The interaction with  
local chapters has been encouraging as the OSGeo vision continues to  
take deep root around the world.  The top priorities now that  
infrastructure is decreasing will be getting 501c3 and insurance  
needs wrapped up.  As well, there are still some sponsorship  
solicitation/fundraising initiatives to follow-up on.  Sponsorship  
funds that have come in will be reported alongside other financial  
reports once we've got those stats pulled together.

Hope you find this helpful and encouraging.
Sincerely,

Tyler

Tyler Mitchell
Executive Director
Open Source Geospatial Foundation
tmitchell at osgeo.org
P: +1-250-277-1621
M: +1-250-303-1831