[Geodata] Geodata Directions

[David William Bitner]

Greetings Geodata folks,

I have to start by saying that I am writing this note out of a bit of
frustration and disappointment.  We currently have 140 members of this
mailing list and 42 people who have self identified on the wiki as
interested in participating in this group.  In the two requests that I have
made recently hoping to get a response from everyone on this list I have
received a total 4 responses.  Only 3 people took the time (probably less
than a couple minutes) to give me scheduling information to try to find a
reasonable monthly meeting time/day of week, and the only person who has
added anything to the wiki (
http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Public_Geospatial_Data_Project_Update_Mission)
that is up to brainstorm different directions for this group has been our
previous chair.

This is all a bit disheartening as these are both activities that take very
little time and are supposed to help engage the members of this group.

I truly believe that for long term success and especially for this group to
be able to engage cooperation and participation with other groups and
individuals, we must be able to clearly state what it is we do and why we
are doing it.

In order to accomplish this, as a first step, I started the wiki at
http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Public_Geospatial_Data_Project_Update_Missionas
a starting point for brainstorming.  If any of you have been involved
in
strategic planning or creating mission statements, brainstorming and having
a way to voice any and all ideas --  realistic or grand dreams -- is almost
always the starting point.  This list should be huge when we are done. Once
we have a large list, my intentions are to collate the lists and try to
combine duplicate or highly similar ideas and also tabulate the support that
each idea has in order to distill where the energies of this group lie.
Part of this may involve another exercise or two for which I will again seek
comment and participation from you.

I do not see my job as chair of this group to go off and set a direction for
this group and just try to get buy off on that.  I see my job as trying to
facilitate consensus on where our energies and our needs lie.

I truly hope that we can engage some level of participation from everyone
who is interested in this project.  I do not expect that everyone will
runoff and work on actual data gathering and donate hours to this project,
but I do at least hope that we can leverage this large community as a
sounding board when it comes to determining directions we should take.

Please tell me if you think the approach that I am taking is poor.  Please
tell me if you have other ideas on how to engage the full community. Please
become engaged yourself!

Thank you all for your interest and your time,

David
OSGeo, Public Geospatial Data Committee Chair

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David William Bitner
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