[California] Getting Started With More Than Conferences

[Landon Blake]

I sent the message below form my personal e-nail on October 7, 2009. I
guess it got bumped. So I am trying again.

Landon

Previous Message: 

Alex has done a great job organizing OSGeo presence at local conferences
throughout
California the past few months. However, I've wanted to post a message
to this mailing list about getting the California Chapter of OSGeo
involved in some other activities. There are two (2) activities I
thought we might be able to support as a chapter, and which I would be
willing to initially nurture.

The first is the idea of designing an award for government agencies
within California that promote free and open access to the geospatial
data they maintain. (We had discussed this at one of our chapter
meetings many moons ago.) I think this is a great way to reward
positive behavior and recognize leaders in this area. (There are so
many government agencies handling free and open access to the
geospatial data they maintain in the wrong way.)

I'd like to work up an award design. I'm thinking of some type of
certificate that can be framed. I'll also put together some proposed
guidleines that can guide the actual award process, which would
include a simple nomination form. I'd like to see if we can get two or
three other people that would be willing to help me with the following
tasks:

- Review and constructive criticism of the certificate design.
- Review and constructive criticism of the guidelines for the award
process.
- Review the 2010 nominations and selection of the first award winner.

I'll pay to get the award certificate framed, and then we can have a
local chapter member present the award.

The second thing I would like to explore is getting a group of chapter
members with programming skills together to work on a small open
source project. I'm not looking for a huge commitment here. I think a
handful of us could accomplish a great deal with just a couple of
hours a month. I imagine we will need to organize our programmers
around a common programming language. Java is the language that I am
the most skilled in, but I can code in Ruby, Python, C#, VB Dot Net,
and as a last resort, C. I can certainly participate in a project with
one of these other languages if I have another chapter member that can
look over my code.

Do we have any programmers that can code in any of the above
programming languages that would be interested in working together on
a California Chapter project? Which language do you prefer?

We could select an existing OSGeo project that needs help, and tackle
one of their main issues. Or, we could work on a new tool. I think we
will be most successful if we keep our project's goals modest and
simple. I've always been interested in the following areas:

- Metadata management.
- Working with time in GIS.
- Cartographic map production.

Is there a particular tool you've been wanting to build or a problem
you've been wanting to solve? Is there an OSGEo project on the brink of
extinction that could
use some new life blood? I think it would be great if we could
get some chapter members together to produce something concrete.

Let me know if you are interested in helping with either of these
activities. I'm not sure how much support we have for these, but I'm
willing to coordinate and put together some teams if there is
interest.

Landon


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