[OSGeo-Discuss] Report from the OSGeo Board meeting

[Arnulf Christl]

Hello,
this is a short report from the OSGeo board meeting held in Denver, USA
after FOS4G 2011. We had a crammed agenda [1] with many things to talk
about and will continue to do so on the board mailing list [2] over the
coming weeks and months. Feel free to join us there and chime in if you
are interested in helping to shape the future of OSGeo. The full minutes
of the meeting will be on the Web soon, the following bullets only give
a short overview of the most important items.

* We have reconsidered the way the organization is run and came to the
conclusion that it is time for a change.
* We would like to diversify our outreach and fundraising and address a
wider range of activities.
* As a result we have decided that the existing role of a single
Executive Director is no longer the best use of our funds and we will
discontinue this role.
* We thank Tyler Mitchell for his great contribution in launching and
bringing OSGeo into operation over the last five years. We look forward
to his continued contributions in coming years.
* We will make supporting code sprints a higher priority of our goals
and draft guidelines [3] to that effect.
* As a first step we decided to financially back-up the Islandwood Code
Sprint (sign up here [4]).
* Beijing has been confirmed as the venue for FOSS4G 2012
* FOSS4G 2011 in Denver was such a great success that we will consider
hosting more regional events, including options for an ongoing North
American conference and a Central and East European FOSS4G.
* The Conference Committee list [5] will be a hot place for talking
about how to organize this.
* We adopted two Memoranda of Understanding with the International
Cartographic Association (ICA) [6] and The GIS and Remote Sensing
Centre, The University of Girona, Spain (SIGTE) [7].
* Our new treasurer is Daniel Morissette. We thank Frank Warmerdam for
the good work he has provided in this position beforehand.
* We welcome Alex Mandel as the new chair of the System Administration
Committee and thank Howard Butler for chairing the committee so far and
welcome his continued support in the System Administration Committee.
* The board confirmed Daniel Morissette as chair of the Incubation
Committee and thank our outgoing chair Frank Warmerdam for launching and
running the Incubator for more than 5 years.
* The nomination and election of up to 20 new OSGeo Charter Members are
going to take place in the coming weeks.
* We thank Peter ter Haar, product manager from Ordnance Survey and
sponsor of OSGeo [8] for sharing his insight on the adoption of Open
Source by public administrations in Europe during the board meeting.

We appreciate the momentum that has carried over from the many talks we
had with OSGeo members and friends at the conference and look forward to
a productive coming year.

On behalf of the OSGeo board of directors,
Arnulf Christl

[1] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Face_to_Face_Meeting_Denver_2011#Agenda
[2] http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/board
[3] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Code_Sprint_Guidelines
[4] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/IslandWood_Code_Sprint_2012
[5] http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/conference_dev
[6] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/MOU_ICA
[7] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/MOU_SIGTE
[8] http://www.osgeo.org/sponsors

-- 
Arnulf Christl
President, OSGeo
http://www.osgeo.org