[Board] Some food for thought from Directions magazine ahead of our board meeting

[Jeff McKenna]

Indeed I found it fascinating.  It is a credit to our hard work as 
volunteers that "OSGeo" and "FOSS4G" are even mentioned in the same 
context as "Amazon", "Apple", and "Facebook".

I did like that they mentioned that OSGeo is poised to do good things 
with their recent changes (I can't remember their wording, but that is 
what I got out of it).

I really can't argue with their outlook on OSGeo and OpenGeo.

I guess it comes down to where (and what) we want to be at the end of 
2012.  To me what separates OSGeo from everyone/thing else is its 
members - regular, charter, board.  So how do we engage and promote 
these members more?

-jeff



On 12-01-03 3:05 PM, Peter Batty wrote:
> I don't know if any of you have listened to this podcast from Adena and
> Joe at Directions magazine, with their predictions for 2012:
>
> http://www.directionsmag.com/podcasts/podcast-predictions-for-the-geospatial-marketplace-2012/219405
>
> They talk about open source starting at around 13:30. The interesting
> thing is that they predict that OpenGeo will "become the go to company
> for information about open source tools ... it doesn't seem like OSGeo,
> which had been that leader before, is taking on that role."
>
> Now I don't always agree with Joe and Adena, and I've told them that on
> occasion :), but they are widely listened to in the broader geospatial
> world, and their views are probably representative of a lot of folks in
> that space. And I can see where they're coming from to some extent -
> part of it probably relates to letting Tyler go, and part of it I think
> is that (IMO) we are not doing enough to get the word out about open
> source to the broader geospatial community (which of course will be a
> topic of conversation in Seattle). I might try to connect with Joe
> and/or Adena before we meet to talk more about their perspectives (in
> particular Joe said he was disappointed in FOSS4G - I suspect that he
> felt it was too technical with not enough content for newcomers, and in
> that regard it's a shame he didn't attend the newcomer day which I think
> he would have got more out of, but it would be interesting to chat in
> more detail about his thoughts).
>
> I plan to write more on my thoughts about our strategy etc before
> Seattle, and encourage others to do the same, but thought this was worth
> sharing just as an input to the thought process.
>