[OSGeo-UK] IMPORTANT: announcement about OSGeo:UK

Thu Mar 17 09:43:12 PDT 2016

Sounds like a good way forward to me, to be honest I'd always assumed we
were a legal entity from running the OSGEO conf in 2013.

Ian

On 17 March 2016 at 16:21, Mike Saunt <mikesaunt at astuntechnology.com> wrote:

> Jo
>
> Sounds great - seems like a good evolution & structured way forward.
>
> Kind regards
> Mike
>
> On Wed, 16 Mar 2016 at 14:17 Jo Cook <jocook at astuntechnology.com> wrote:
>
>> Dear List,
>>
>> I have an important announcement to make!
>>
>> OSGeo:UK has previously muddled along happily as an informal group of
>> like-minded people but with no formal definition. For reasons that I will
>> outline below, we find it necessary to become a legal unincorporated
>> organisation, with an officially elected committee, and a constitution
>> outlining our aims and objectives.
>>
>> Our main reason for doing this is to allow us to set up a business bank
>> account, and this needs to happen extremely quickly in order to allow us to
>> process payments/accept sponsorship for the FOSS4GUK 2016 event in June.
>> Our previous banking arrangement is no longer available to us, due to
>> circumstances beyond our control.
>>
>> Due to the need to get the constitution adopted and a committee in place
>> before we start the business of opening a bank account, we're not holding
>> elections at this stage for the committee positions. I (Jo Cook) will be
>> the initial Chair, Steven Feldman will be the Treasurer, and Antony Scott
>> has kindly agreed to act as Secretary. These positions will be put up for
>> election at our first official AGM, which will be within 12 calendar months
>> of the adoption of the constitution.
>>
>> We have put together a constitution (attached as a pdf) that we feel sets
>> out the aims and powers of OSGeo:UK. It's based on a standard legal
>> template so there should be no concerns about wording. The aims are taken
>> from our initial aims that the group was recognised under by OSGeo. The
>> powers are worded to be as light touch as possible- these can be amended at
>> some later date by calling a Special General Meeting. The guidance we used
>> putting this together can be found here:
>> http://www.netlawman.co.uk/ia/unincorporated-associations and see also
>> https://www.gov.uk/business-legal-structures/unincorporated-association
>> and
>> http://www.valonline.org.uk/setting-community-group/write-your-constitution,
>> which contains a link to the template we used, and others.
>>
>> The eagle-eyed amongst you will notice that, amongst the powers listed in
>> the constitution, we reserve the right to charge membership fees for both
>> individuals and organisations to join the local chapter. Don't be alarmed
>> by this- we are not proposing to turn this into a closed group, we will
>> maintain this mailing list as our informal list of members, and most
>> importantly the method by which every day decisions about what we do are
>> made. However, becoming an organisation and having a bank account brings
>> some running costs and responsibilities, and as such we will have a second
>> category of member called a Voting Member, for which a small membership fee
>> will be applied. The job of Voting Members will be to vote on
>> constitutional matters, and only Voting Members will have the power to call
>> General Meetings. The additional benefits of becoming a Voting Member, and
>> the fee structure, will be announced in due course- but I emphasise it will
>> be a small fee.
>>
>> Since there is an urgent need to get this constitution adopted so we can
>> get the bank account in place, we're setting a deadline for
>> comments/objections of close of play on Friday. Please do comment if you
>> have any concerns, and feel free to contact me on or off list to discuss.
>>
>> If you're happy with everything set out here, then there's no need to
>> respond. Silence will be considered acceptance.
>>
>> All the best
>>
>> Jo
>>
>> --
>> *Jo Cook*
>> t:+44 7930 524 155/twitter:@archaeogeek
>>
>>
>> --
>> Astun Technology Ltd, The Coach House, 17 West Street, Epsom, Surrey,
>> KT18 7RL, UK
>> t:+44 1372 744 009 w: astuntechnology.com twitter:@astuntech
>> <https://twitter.com/astuntech>
>>
>> iShare - enterprise geographic intelligence platform
>> <https://astuntechnology.com/ishare/>
>> GeoServer, PostGIS and QGIS training
>> <https://astuntechnology.com/services/#training>
>> Helpdesk and customer portal
>> <http://support.astuntechnology.com/support/login>
>>
>> Company registration no. 5410695. Registered in England and Wales.
>> Registered office: 120 Manor Green Road, Epsom, Surrey, KT19 8LN VAT no.
>> 864201149.
>>
>> ------------------------------
>> <https://astuntechnology.com/astun-user-group-conference-2016/>
>> Astun User Group - Conference 2016
>> <https://astuntechnology.com/astun-user-group-conference-2016/>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> UK mailing list
>> UK at lists.osgeo.org
>> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/uk
>
>
> --
> Astun Technology Ltd, The Coach House, 17 West Street, Epsom, Surrey, KT18
> 7RL, UK
> t:+44 1372 744 009 w: astuntechnology.com twitter:@astuntech
> <https://twitter.com/astuntech>
>
> iShare - enterprise geographic intelligence platform
> <https://astuntechnology.com/ishare/>
> GeoServer, PostGIS and QGIS training
> <https://astuntechnology.com/services/#training>
> Helpdesk and customer portal
> <http://support.astuntechnology.com/support/login>
>
> Company registration no. 5410695. Registered in England and Wales.
> Registered office: 120 Manor Green Road, Epsom, Surrey, KT19 8LN VAT no.
> 864201149.
>
> ------------------------------
> <https://astuntechnology.com/astun-user-group-conference-2016/>
> Astun User Group - Conference 2016
> <https://astuntechnology.com/astun-user-group-conference-2016/>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> UK mailing list
> UK at lists.osgeo.org
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/uk
>

-- 
Ian Turton
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/uk/attachments/20160317/162c4f2d/attachment-0001.html>