[Aust-NZ] Fwd: OSGeo Annual General Meeting - Local Chapters please join

[Bruce Bannerman]

The work on FOSS4G SotM Oceania is great to see. I personally would love to see it continue, with events rotated around the region.

However a note of caution from experience: 

We found after organising FOSS4G-2009 that we also had a great organising team and generated considerable momentum.
However, this significant two year effort was difficult to sustain and resulted in volunteer ‘burn out' for many of the LOC.
It was also difficult to sustain the level of volunteerism support from the organisations that people worked in, particularly with their work responsibilities.
In my case and others as well I suspect, there was also the need to balance limited volunteer time between various international communities, and the local community. 

Therefore, I suggest that we follow the OSGeo model and have seperate bodies for the Local Chapter and the Conference Committees to allow people to balance their volunteer time as their personal situation, interests and supporting organisation allow.

We may well find that we have the same people in leadership roles on both.

What we do need to do is to establish and maintain an open process for people to be able to contribute to, and assume leadership roles in either the Local Chapter, or the various conference committees. We also need a process to refresh these leadership roles routinely. The International OSGeo has processes that we can utilise and adapt as appropriate.

To me, this is probably a higher priority that revisiting any formalisation of the Local Chapter as a legal entity. 

I have no objections to establishing this legal entity, however we do need to have a clear understanding of the consequences, risks and benefits of doing so. 

We also need to understand who has the right to establish this entity and manage it as a representative of OSGeo-AustNZ. We also need to understand how we will replace this person/people/organisation when appropriate, and what process we have to force the change in the unlikely event that the person/people/organisation refuses to cede control of the legal entity in line with OSGeo-AustNZ community expectations.

It will take time to work through these issues.

@Alex and Adam,

It is good to see you both step up to represent OSGeo-AustNZ at FOSS4G-2018.

Kind regards,

Bruce


> On 8 Aug 2018, at 08:04, Alex Leith <alexgleith at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi All
> 
> I agree with Daniel. We have a really strong committee working on FOSS4G SotM Oceania, and I would love at the very least for that to continue, with different chairs/chair next year, and for there to be another conference organised in 2019. I'll certainly help on the next committee.
> 
> Regarding formalisation, we need to look at it carefully. Yes, there's potential liability and a fair bit of overhead in setting it all up, but it's work looking at still, even if it does turn out to be too hard for now.
> 
> Regarding the AustNZ chapter, I'll be in Tanzania and would be happy to represent, but if that's inappropriate, then I'm happy to step aside.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Alex
> 
> On Tue, 7 Aug 2018 at 19:22 Daniel Silk <dsilk at linz.govt.nz <mailto:dsilk at linz.govt.nz>> wrote:
> > On 7 Aug 2018, at 19:56, Bruce Bannerman <bruce.bannerman.osgeo at gmail.com <mailto:bruce.bannerman.osgeo at gmail.com>> wrote:
> >
> > I don’t see the need to establish another local chapter for AustNZ.
> >
> > We already have one. Let’s just start using it.
> 
> 
> I don't think anyone is suggesting establishing a competing local chapter.. simply revisiting what "using it" actually means.
> 
> There is a lot of energy and enthusiasm behind the FOSS4G SotM Oceania event in Melbourne. If we just pull together a conference committee every year to continue to organise this event, and that's it, then I think that's great.
> 
> However the conference does provide an opportunity to discuss the way forward and just how structured or unstructured we should be about it. I'm sure there are plenty of great ideas out there on how we can continue the momentum throughout our region.
> 
> Cheers
> Daniel
> 
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