[California] Local vs. state-wide chapters

[Matt Hancher]

Hello all,

A couple of other SF Bay Area folks and I were recently discussing
the idea of creating a local chapter of OSGeo.  As I was looking into
this, I was intrigued to discover the California chapter-in-formation.
As I read your goals, however, I began to wonder whether it might
make sense to have separate (but hopefully related) state-wide and
local-area chapters.  I'm curious to hear any of  your thoughts on
this.

My sense is that, especially given how large California is, the state-
wide chapter will focus on accomplishing large tasks at the state
level that require wide-area collaboration and lobbying support.
The focus will be on advancing the interests of the OSGeo community,
rather than developing specific local communities.

A local chapter, by contrast, would be focused primarily on brining
people physically together, to swap advice and stories, education one
another in new technologies, do small-scale interoperability testing,
and so forth.  It would be a much more personal endeavor, taking
advantage of the physical proximity of the membership.  Presumably the
local chapter(s) would also be involved in the state-level chapter
activities in various ways.

What do you all think of this model?  Do what extent do local and state
chapters address different problems, so that having both benefits both?
Alternatively, do what extent would this spread the community's
resources too thin?

Thanks for any thoughts.

Matt

Matthew D. Hancher
Intelligent Systems Division
NASA Ames Research Center
mdh at email.arc.nasa.gov