[Board] Fwd: Official expression of interest forming a European Chapter

Wed Jul 26 00:03:35 PDT 2017

Dear Maxi
Well noted. We'll discuss about that as well. This is a relevant point. Thank you for suggesting solutions.
Are there other comments by other members?
Best regards
Maria

Sent from my Samsung device

-------- Original message --------
From: Massimiliano Cannata <massimiliano.cannata at supsi.ch>
Date: 25/07/2017 14:13 (GMT+01:00)
To: Dirk Frigne <dirk.frigne at geosparc.com>, OSGeo Discussions <discuss at lists.osgeo.org>, eu at lists.osgeo.org, OSGeo Board <board at lists.osgeo.org>
Subject: Re: [Board] Fwd: Official expression of interest forming a European Chapter

Dear European charter members and OSGeo board,
I would like to express my support for an OSGeo continental chapter and provide my point of view, that even if often considered uncomfortable, hope will bring discussion to improve.

I hope that before starting the chapter:

* there is a clear and equitable rule for using the OSGeo name in European bids (see h2020 for example) since this may be a competitive advantage.
It is totally unclear to me how OSGeo-EU would relate to H2020 projects for example:
- Will it participate as a partner in any calls?
- How the selection of supported project will be done?
- How, in case of funding, allocated money will be distributed to members?

* there is a defined and focused coordination with local chapters
- synergies are needed to avoid duplication of efforts and adoption of a common action line.
- ideally I'd like to see a hierarchical structure from international to continental and national level "chapters" but this is a matter for the board..

Here some proposed actions,
that in my opinion would demonstrate the open principle of the OSGeo European Chapter  community:

* run a democratic election of the board representatives within 6 months from the inception

* include all the OSGeo charter member that express their willing as "full" member (was charter member in OSGeo not sure how "full member" is in OSGeo-EU)

Regards,
Maxi

Il 24 lug 2017 2:56 PM, "Dirk Frigne" <dirk.frigne at geosparc.com<mailto:dirk.frigne at geosparc.com>> ha scritto:
Maria

"is a member of a local chapter also a charter
> member of Eu Chapter? Or we will have a complex structure where local
> chapter members can be not Eu charter members but charter members of
> OSGeo as a whole?"

No, as Jody and Lucca already mentioned, this is an organisation of
volunteers. Everybody who wants to volunteer can become a member, but
volunteers can also be 'only' OSGeo members.

The "official" OSGeo-Europe members are responsible to guard the correct
working of the organisation, as a legal structure. 22 volunteers
expressed there interest to become a founding member and have signed the
bylaws that we discussed last year as a google drive document, and
during the BOF of July 19 2017.

As a community we appreciate the help of everybody who wants to promote
Geo free and open source software. Everybody who want's to support the
local chapter can add his name on the wiki [1]. As of today there are
already 27 names on the list. The bylaws have a mechanism to add these
members as "full members" during the next general assembly (a similar
process as for OSGeo.org).

But as Lucca already mentioned: it is more important to be a member of
OSGeo.org, although I hope we can make OSGeo.org stronger trough the
initiative we are setting up.

Once we've got our formal acceptance by the OSGeo Board, we will publish
the bylaws in the Belgian Official Journal and create the legal
structure. We will start to setup the agenda of the typical European
points we want to work on this first year asap after acceptance.

Dirk

PS. I added the European list as I think this discussion also concerns
the European list.

[1] https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Europe

On 2017-07-23 15:32, Luca Delucchi wrote:
> On 23 July 2017 at 12:54, Jody Garnett <jody.garnett at gmail.com<mailto:jody.garnett at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> All local chapters have the same relationship with OSGeo.
>>
>> A key reason to found a local chapter is to interact and advocate for open
>> source on a regional city, state or national or union level - something the
>> global osgeo organization is not in the best position to do.
>>
>> I do not think it is useful (or any of our business) to ask about members
>> being automatically in a group. We are a volunteer organization and members
>> volunteer where their hearts lie.
>>
>
> I fully agree with Jody, OSGeo EU will be a local chapter with its
> freedom as all the others, only the people who want be part of it
> should be part of it (for example I'm in Italian local chapter but
> right now I choose to not be part of OSGeo EU)
>
> As I already told during this days I don't fully believe on it right
> now (maybe in the future will be different) and I'm a little bit
> worried about the energy that it will take from other
> activities/chapter.
>
> However with more than 20 founders, most of them really well known in
> the OSGeo family, I think that OSGeo EU should be accepted as new
> chapter.
>
> my2cents
>

--
Yours sincerely,

ir. Dirk Frigne
CEO @geosparc

Geosparc n.v.
Brugsesteenweg 587
B-9030 Ghent
Tel: +32 9 236 60 18
GSM: +32 495 508 799

http://www.geomajas.org
http://www.geosparc.com

@DFrigne
be.linkedin.com/in/frigne<http://be.linkedin.com/in/frigne>

_______________________________________________
Board mailing list
Board at lists.osgeo.org<mailto:Board at lists.osgeo.org>
https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/board
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/board/attachments/20170726/56a54720/attachment.htm>