Consolidating, Tasks, Brainstorm

[Arnulf Christl]

Hey All,
some consolidation for the VisCom team and tasks. The membership page 
currently lists (sorry for strange formatting, it is scraped):

arnulf  	Arnulf Christl  	  Project Owner
davemac 	Dave McIlhagga 	Project Developer
dbrookshier 	Daniel Brookshier 	Project Contributor
jasonbirch 	Jason Birch 	Project Developer
mlucas17 	Mark Lucas 	Project Contributor
mpg 	Michael P. Gerlek 	Project Developer   Co-Project Owner
neteler 	Markus Neteler 	Co-Project Owner
pnaciona 	Pericles (Perry) Nacionales 	Observer
seansternfeldt 	Sean Sternfeldt 	Co-Project Owner
tmitchell 	Tyler Mitchell 	Co-Project Owner

Jason Birch and Pericles (Perry) Nacionales, have bowed out gracefully 
as they are already heavily involved in WebCom.

Hi Jason, Perry,
this is just intended as a reminder, you can both stay listed as members 
if you like, we are happy to have you here as observers and maybe you 
want to get active when WebCom business slackens.

Currently subscribed to the main list 
(dev at visibilitycommittee.osgeo.org) are:

<select multiple="multiple" name="unsubscribeList" size="8">
     <option 
value="arnulf.christl at ccgis.de">arnulf.christl at ccgis.de</option>
     <option value="dbrookshier at collab.net">dbrookshier at collab.net</option>
     <option 
value="dmcilhagga at dmsolutions.ca">dmcilhagga at dmsolutions.ca</option>
     <option value="jason.birch at nanaimo.ca">jason.birch at nanaimo.ca</option>
     <option value="mlucas17 at mac.com">mlucas17 at mac.com</option>
     <option value="mpg at lizardtech.com">mpg at lizardtech.com</option>
     <option value="pnaciona at gis.umn.edu">pnaciona at gis.umn.edu</option>
     <option value="warmerdam at pobox.com">warmerdam at pobox.com</option>
</select>

This means Markus Neteler, Sean Sternfeldt and Tyler Mitchell do not get 
what is discussed on the list (which is why I added you as CC). If you 
want to get on the list please subscribe or tell me to add you. And our 
president listens in but does not appear in the membership list which I 
guess is just fine.

Any qualms, please discuss here.

== Tasks ==
We will have an inofficial skype conference (no call in, just Skype) to 
have a chat:
http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/First_VisCom_Meeting

Please add me as Skype user arnulf_christl, the rest is easy.

This is not to decide anything but rather to get together (find out 
whether everybody connects with Skype) and discuss what will be the next 
steps. We will make an official phone conference next week. Please 
suggest time and date, my last tries were not very fruitful :-/. For me 
it would be fine in the late evening and deep into the night

== Brainstorm ==
I have several longer term projects up and running (some way before 
OSGeo founding) regarding conferences and exhibitions in the German 
language context. With the OSGeo I suggest to continue them as a starter 
for OSGeo VisCom operations. I hacked some of the events (where 
preparations are already under way) into the Wiki:
http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Promotion_and_Visibility_Committee#Future_events_with_OSGeo_Project_and_Foundation_presence

Local events in the vicinity that we can manage with the help from 
locals, companies and individuals (I guess that those people will in 
future be called members and friends of OSGeo):
* FOSSGIS 2006 conference - German language Free and Open Source 
Software GIS conference - 29-30 March 2006 (Bonn, Germany)
* OSGeo booth at the LinuxTag 2006 - 3-6 May 2006 (Wiesbaden, Germany)
* AGIT 2006 GIS convention, conference and exhibition - 5-7 July 2006 
(Salzburg, Austria)
* Intergeo 2006 10-12 October 2006 (Munich, Germany)

The first appearance of the OSGeo as hoster of several projects (as far 
as I can see) will be the LinuxTag:
http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php?title=LinuxTag_2006

I know that all this is on rather short notice and that I heavily 
doocratized this. I hope this is not going to be a problem. But anyway, 
we hope to bootstrap the operation of the OSGeo Booth from this event. 
Find some initial ideas here:
http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Operate_OSGeo_Booth

i (lower case indicating humbly) suggest that we aim for the Intergeo 
2006 (Oct. 2006) as a place to appear as full fledged operative OSGeo 
FOundation outside of internal events like FOSS4G. OSGeo would then 
represent the community and provide docking interfaces for OS businesses 
and interested new users alike. This will involve the presentation of 
all stable and incubating projects (+ friends?), a Public Geodata 
information center and sponsors. I imagine that by then we will have the 
size, capacity and appearance of any of the other major GIS vendors. 
This is OSSIM - ahm: awsome! Especially regarding that at the last 
Intergeo none of these projects were able to present themselves out of 
their own capacity except for those that a company did the funding. 
Until then we will need support and stable policies from the Fundraising 
committee and I guess Sean Sternfeldt and Autodesk will really be 
helpful (at least Gary indicated that).

Finally it will then be possible to point people to a major booth and 
say: Go there if you need to get information about OSGeo software 
(MapServer and MapGuide OS and GeoServer and GDAL/OGR and all the other 
goodies). No more need to mumble - shout out loud.

Best regards,
Arnulf.

PS:
Piitwist again, I am so shy.