[OSGeo-Discuss] Local Chapter, network and structuration

[Daniel Morissette]

Yves,

The concept of "Network" is very interesting and addresses a need that 
is met by several local chapters. In the specific case of the Quebec and 
France chapters, a Francophone network would allows us to coordinate our 
efforts on French documentation and other French language issues.

Here in North America we start to feel the need for a North American 
meeting to allow people who cannot travel overseas to still meet their 
peers at least yearly (the goal is not to compete with the international 
event, but to complement it). A North American network could be added to 
your schema that would include the Quebec, BC, Ottawa, Twin Cities and 
New Mexico local chapters (did I forget any?), and one of its goals 
would be the coordination of a yearly North-American meeting. I presume 
other continents might end up doing the same.

Daniel


Yves Jacolin wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> **History**
> OSGeo-fr has been formely created in september as the Francophone Local 
> Chapter following 1 year discussing details for structuring ourselves. In 
> june, Daniel Morissette, Thierry Badard and Nicolas Gignac proposed to people 
> form Quebec to meet each other to think about how Quebec could act inside 
> this Francophone Local Chapter. This meeting began the process for creating 
> Quebec Local Chapter. I won't details more but one of the purposes of this 
> Local Chapter could be to be a kind of local contact for Francophone LC.
> 
> The creation of the OSGeo-qc is mainly due to the spatial distance and the 
> difference between qc and fr (most people acting in OSGeo-fr come from 
> France) about the way FOSS are used. Each area having their own issue and 
> progress. Daniel, Thierry or Nicolas will correct and clarify this facts.
> 
> Following the creation meeting of OSGeo-qc I spent some time to think about 
> why this occurs and how change or more specificly how structure OSGeo-fr and 
> OSGeo-qc, how do we work together, etc.
> 
> ** Propositions**
> I suggest to not use LC to join people with common langage. As there are some 
> importante difference between countries: what they need to do, how they can 
> do it, etc. Furthermore, following the well knonw sentence : Think global, 
> act local, it is important that one people (or more) act localy, this is not 
> easy within OSGeo-fr. The best way (IMHO) is to create one LC for each 
> country and join this LC into network. So we will create Francophone Network 
> (containing OSGo-fr, OSGeo-qc, etc.), Europeen Network (containing OSGeo-fr, 
> OSGeo-it, OSGeo-de, OSGeo-uk, sp, etc.).
> 
> Each network allowing each LC to share informations and contact, think global 
> and act local, even if act global could be possible, I think mainly for 
> europeen network.
> 
> **Conclusion**
> You will find here [1] the schema_osgeo.pdf file illustrating what could be 
> the structure of OSGeo. I added some information on the right about url 
> website. I suggest to use Name Space for each three group in order to better 
> structure the wiki and allowing searching for only one (or more) of this 
> groups.
> 
> What does the other LC think about this? Specially Spanih LC which is as the 
> Francophone LC, mainly based on common langage.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Y.
> [1] http://osgeo2.gloobe.org/board/


-- 
Daniel Morissette
http://www.mapgears.com/