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

Thu Mar 17 11:08:29 PDT 2016

+1  Important first step to help building strong foundations in place for OSGeo:UK

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

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Jo Cook
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t:+44 1372 744 009<tel:%2B44%201372%20744%20009> w: astuntechnology.com<http://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.

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