Geodata Committee, first IRC meeting, description thereof

[Jo Walsh]

dear OSGeo discussion,

The first IRC meeting of the Public Geospatial Data Committee had 
a good representative turnout, and clocked in at an hour.
http://logs.qgis.org/osgeo/%23osgeo.2006-03-22.log - thanks gsherman
http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Geodata_Committee_Meeting_20060322
- thankyou Perry for setting this up and Schuyler for minute-ing.

Here is my commentary:

At this stage the group is beginning to establish what common ground 
there is between the participants, and trying to focus on what we can 
achieve in the near term, to create a good framework
(in terms of best practise and basic cataloging / searching initiatives) 
that can be useful for the software projects now, and be a useful
basis in the future for cross-OSGeo initiatives, toolbuilding for 
collaborative maintenance of public geospatial data. 

There's a lot to cover, a lot of ideas even in a brief discussion, and 
people have different priorities which mesh at the edges:

 * Showing people where and how they can get public geodata for their apps
 * Providing high-quality packages of educational demo data 
 * Offering clear guidance on how data can be re-used

So we decided on the creation of three informal working groups:
http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Geodata_Discovery_Working_Group
http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Geodata_Packaging_Working_Group
http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Geodata_Licensing_Working_Group

( These pages are stubs now, to be filled out with references. 
 I like what's happening in the comments at
 http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Core_Curriculum_Project where people
 are setting out ideas which can later be refactored into actions. )

Well, we seem to have enjoyed it enough to want to do it again, next
week at the same time, Weds 29th March 1500UTC.
http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Geodata_Committee_Meeting_20060329

Meta-information: http://geodata.osgeo.org/ 

Thanks everyone who attended and contributed today.


jo