[OSGeo Oceania] [Oceania-Board] Geospatial Council of Australia - thoughts?

Wed Mar 29 15:40:10 PDT 2023

Great points, Adam, all,
I am also in favor, but we need to be cautious that the position of OSGEO Oceania is strong and autonomous in all this ( along the lines that dam worded much better than I).

I have been (nominated by my employer) member of a Disaster Management and Recovery SIG in SSSI, which very quickly devolved into a VGI/Crowdsourcing group. I have been consistently pushing for interaction with OSGEO while I was active there, but I noticed a few direction that I really did not appreciate much:

  *   Extractive approaches to volunteering efforts ( what does XY data provider need, how can we get volunteers to contribute those data, little discussion about those data then being free and open for all);
  *   Misunderstanding of the take and give back attitude in OSM, attempts to use mapathons for deliberate institutional goals (validation of data quality, etc);
  *   Neglecting interaction ( at first) with the main representatives of OSM ( OSGEO Oceania)
  *   Drive to pursue any funded /grant opportunities in this space ( to my eyes, competing with OSGEO Oceania here).

I would hope that this is all because of the unfamiliar dynamics and models of operation in the volunteering space, but this si something that needs to change, and OSGEO should advocate for this, including wrt GCA.

We need to be aware that we have something to stand on (Regional reps for both OSGEO and OSM). How much commercial software depends on, e,g., GDAL, PROJ (and a lot of the geodesy around it too), all the Javascript libraries, etc? How many companies and industries depend on OSM? The more traditional spatial sciences/surveying community may not be aware of all this, and maybe this is an opportunity to raise awareness, and change attitudes, to empower all and any spatial effort in Australia.

Martin

From: Oceania-Board <oceania-board-bounces at lists.osgeo.org> on behalf of Adam Steer <adam.d.steer at gmail.com>
Date: Thursday, 30 March 2023 at 8:51 am
To: Alex Leith <alexgleith at gmail.com>
Cc: OSGeo Oceania Board <oceania-board at lists.osgeo.org>, OSgeo - Oceania <oceania at lists.osgeo.org>
Subject: Re: [Oceania-Board] [OSGeo Oceania] Geospatial Council of Australia - thoughts?
Hi Alex, all

In OSGeo we try to find areas of common ground and avoid extractive
practice for MoUs, which are long term and take a long time to make
(the OGC MoU took 2+ years). So however it is drafted, it needs to
ensure that the energy flow is not one way! Off the top of my head:

- Geospatial Council of Australia (GCA) and OSGeo Oceania (OO) will
collaborate on conference discounts and comms (eg FOSS4G SotM Oceania
turns up in their calendar, counts for CPD etc, Locate turns up in
OO's calendar, everyone talks so dates don't conflict, maybe members
of each org get a discount and an opportunity to trade their discount
in to a travel grant program - noting that Locate might not do this,
but OO events can ;) )
- quid pro quo booths at conferences if thats a thing people want?
- co promotion as supporting/ collaborating orgs, logos on websites etc
- maybe something about seeking expertise from OO first when talking
about open things?

Awards - personally not my thing and (IMO) about the last thing a
community org should focus on. I've just returned from a couple of
years in Norway dealing with a community that is strongly cult of
personality (rockstar/award/??) based, and it sucks. Where was the
community discussion about awards in OSGeo Oceania?

Strong avoids: sharing member data, sharing mailing lists, paying
money, anything suggesting OO do something without an energy or cash
return.

An MoU with OO and GCA also has to think ahead a bit given OO's
regional focus and GCA's more local focus. Treat it as a model for
other regional agreements - if we can find people from other regional
orgs who might seek similar MoU's to review it, that would be great.

Ohyeah, an MoU *has to be* public and reviewable by the community.
OSGeo's MoU with OGC is a good example of this practice.

Cheers,

Adam

On Thu, 30 Mar 2023 at 08:29, Alex Leith <alexgleith at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hey Folks
>
> Thanks for raising this, Adam.
>
> I’ll add it to the next Board meeting for discussion, and will reach out to Paul Digney, who is acting president.
>
> Something that we could push for is having our awards (proposed for the next conference) feed into the APSEA awards. I think that might work.
>
> Any other ideas for what could be included in the MOU?
>
> Cheers,
>
> On Thu, 30 Mar 2023 at 8:22 am, Adam Steer <adam.d.steer at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Emma, Kate
>>
>> Thanks for the support!
>>
>> As a strategic approach I'd personally go straight for board <> board level comms without delay - because honestly FOSS4G tools and OSGeo-championed concepts of open-ness / inclusivity are in every aspect of geostuff, all the areas of practice.
>>
>> (in my opinion) we do ourselves, the community and industry a disservice if we act as if open source geostuff is a special interest or niche subset within the geospatial community.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Adam
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 29, 2023, 21:22 Kate Fairlie <kfairlie at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> YES! I would love to see this happen (as someone who has been very active in SSSI previously, and not very active in OSgeo). I highly doubt SSSI/GCA has previously reached out. Possibly worthwhile waiting until "areas of practice" chairs are determined (to get a bit of a champion), though could definitely sound out board in the meantime..
>>>
>>> On Wed, Mar 29, 2023 at 4:47 PM Emma Hain <emmahain at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hey all
>>>> My thoughts exactly!
>>>> I think setting up a MOU would be a good step forward.
>>>> Cheers
>>>> Em
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Mar 29, 2023, 3:29 PM Adam Steer <adam.d.steer at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Hey OSGeo Oceania
>>>>>
>>>>> The Geospatial Council of Australia formally launched recently -
>>>>> merging SSSI and SIBA/GITA: https://geospatialcouncil.org.au
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm curious about their level of interaction with the open geospatial
>>>>> community, does anyone have any thoughts / input / news? Should OSGeo
>>>>> Oceania seek to form an MoU with GCA about how the organisations can
>>>>> collaborate?
>>>>>
>>>>> I think there's a lot of potential for raising the profile of open
>>>>> source geospatial approaches, especially in professional development
>>>>> and mentoring, given the depth of expertise existing in the OSGeo
>>>>> Oceania community - and also a lot of potential to return value
>>>>> (maintenance $$) to the open source community that might not otherwise
>>>>> flow back.
>>>>>
>>>>> Maybe the OSGeo Oceania board has already reached out, or the GCA has
>>>>> already reached out?
>>>>>
>>>>> Thoughts and discussion welcome :)
>>>>>
>>>>> Cheers
>>>>>
>>>>> Adam
>>>>> --
>>>>> OSGeo director
>>>>> https://iamadamsteer.com
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Oceania mailing list
>>>>> Oceania at lists.osgeo.org
>>>>> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/oceania
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Oceania mailing list
>>>> Oceania at lists.osgeo.org
>>>> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/oceania
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>
> --
> Alex Leith
> m: 0419189050
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