Mission Statement

[Frank Warmerdam]

Folks,

I don't want to do too much navel gazing with regard to the mission
statements and the such.  But I have prepared a draft mission statement
for wider review.  Let me know if you have concerns.  Note the mission
statement is deliberately not detailed.

"""
  Mission

The OSGeo Ottawa Chapter exists to provide support for local users of Open 
Source Geospatial software, and to promote the goals and projects of the Open 
Source Geospatial Foundation. The Chapter is focused on the National Capital 
Region around Ottawa with face to face meetings providing networking, support 
and educational opportunities to the local members.
"""

Some noteworthy implications:
  o I have tried to stress the role of the local chapter in helping it's
    members by explicitly listing "support for local users" and by indicating
    the local meetings are for "networking, support and educational
    opportunities"
  o It also notes that the local chapter exists to promote the goals and
    projects of the foundation.  We can chose to interprete this somewhat
    liberally to include projects not formally part of the foundation (like
    PostGIS, etc), and to emphasize the goals for which there is local
    interest.
  o I have included the whole national capital region, but specifically avoided
    trying to imply a broader mandate.  Basically, I'm suggesting a focus
    around face to face meetings rather than this being a provincial or
    national group.  Of course we may take on a few broader items but that
    isn't our focus.

Dave has prepared a bunch of more specific objectives which I have
augmented a bit.  These are currently:

"""
  Objectives
     * Monthly face to face meetings
           o Networking
           o Presentations
           o Workshops and Tutorials
           o User to user support
           o Job Opportunities
           o HowTo's
     * Colaborative Projects
           o Documentation
           o Local Data Sets
           o Supporting OSGEO projects at large
     * Regional Events
           o Conference
           o Demonstrations
     * Communication
           o Active mailing List
           o Content Rich Wiki
           o Outreach to local Geo community
           o Documented Activities
"""

I added "Networking", "User to user support" and "Job Opportunities"
because I think these are especially achievable at the local level.
To a large extent participation in broad OSGeo projects can be done by
folks without a local chapter, though discussing and working on some of
them as a local group may prove helpful.

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGF, http://osgeo.org