[Ottawa_users] Tonight's meeting

[Scott Mitchell]

On 11-Oct-07, at 22:58 , Dave Sampson wrote:

> Hey gang,
>
> I was unable to make it tonight so I was hoping that some people or  
> one person might be able to  break-down the evenings discussions  
> and see what what came up. perhaps each subject could be its own  
> seprate thread? Some of the things on the list that may be of  
> interest to those unable to attend tonight's meeting:
>
> 1. Canadian Chapter with local branches in Ottawa and Toronto
>
> 2. headway on the Canadian pages on OSGEO wiki now with 5  
> interested inviduals: http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Canada

Sorry, Dave, there was some active avoidance of these topics, and  
none of the rest of us pushed it.  Sort of a holiday from the  
"debate", I guess.

>
> 3. GIS Day activities: http://www.gisday.com/
>

See Jeff's email - one other thing is that we discussed the fact that  
in situations where there might not be enough resources (people,  
time, money, whatever) for a completely separate presence of OSGEO/ 
OSGEO-Ottawa at events, we should look for willing partners.  For  
example, last year at Carleton's GIS day I shared a table with the  
Canadian Cartography Association.  Jeff might split his energies/time/ 
space between DMSG and OSGEO this year.  And so on...

> 4. Code Sprint (June):

See Jeff's message again, but I'll add that we discussed that there  
could be a combination of code sprinting and workshops, to broaden  
the appeal.  I will follow up with Dru on how best to set this up to  
take advantage of resources at Carleton.  I haven't followed up with  
my department to fully sanction this yet, but I still went ahead and  
volunteered lab space, based on past support for similar endeavours.

>
> 6. Any news from FOSS4G Victoria 2007. Blogs, video, interesting BOF
>

Assorted individual stories from myself, Jeff, Frank and Andrew, plus  
a good summary statement from Jeff about the feeling that a corner  
has been turned, and the involvement of so many big names in the  
FOSS4G community (many of which have been traditionally at least  
thought of as very closed-source) creates a new environment.  This,  
plus other factors such as the growing size of the organized part of  
this community / increasing links amongst community members,  
professional nature of the conference itself, etc, lead to a strong  
sense of a maturity.  Adena Schutzberg did a nice presentation about  
the conference in the closing session, in which she eloquently put  
words to this sense, and our own thinking here is definitely shaped  
by her presentation, but it really rang true.  	

See http://www.directionsmag.com/article.php?article_id=2562&trv=1


Cheers,
Scott