[OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo in Belgium

[Arnulf Christl]

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On 17.03.2015 23:34, Johan Van de Wauw wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 10:47 AM, Dirk Frigne <dirk.frigne at geosparc.com> wrote:
>> 1. Do you agree with the fact that we investigate how we can join forces
>> with the open knowledge foundation Belgium to start up the Belgium
>> chapter of OSGeo
> We should definitely work together. I believe we should first set our
> goals with OSGeo Belgium and then choose whether it makes sense to be
> under their umbrella.
> 
> Kind Regards,
> 
> Johan

...sounds like a good plan.


This mail is purposefully cross posted to the Local Chapters Mailing
List [0] since that is the place where we try to collect information for
folks interested in acting locally.


Just a few notes from experience: Running a legal entity to organize
things actually eats up a good chunk of volunteer resources which could
be better used to actually promote Open Source, organize conferences and
so on.

The "German language chapter" as we call it, operates a legal entity,
the FOSSGIS e.V. [1]. This did not prevent us from having the 2013
edition of the annual FOSSGIS conference take place in Rapperswil,
Switzerland [2] (Note to foreigners: Swiss are *not* Germans and
typically also speak French, Italian and Romansh).

Same for Austria where we have an OSGeo Day at every AGIT [3] conference
since 2006 and will have a full fledged German language FOSSGIS
conference in 2016 (a few months prior to FOSS4G in Bonn). Next note to
foreigners: Never ever even suggest to an Austrian that she is "German" :-)

So we (the OSGeo tribe at large) try to cater for everybody who speaks
the same language here and at the same time minimize the effort we need
to put into operating a legal entity. Even OpenStreetMap likes us and
uses the FOSSGIS e.V. as the legal body to manage their local budget,
fund their servers, accounting, GPS rental and so on.

This is just an example how things can work together even across
cultural differences and that you do not need to have a legal entity in
place to organize national or regional conferences and meetings.


Have fun,
Arnulf

[0] http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/local-chapters
[1] http://www.fossgis.de/
[2] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/FOSSGIS_2013
[3] http://www.agit.at/


- -- 
Arnulf Christl (Director)
The metaspatial Institute Certification:
Open Source - Open Data - Open Standards
http://www.metaspatial.net/en/institute
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