[UN] Welcome and next steps

[Jeff McKenna]

Hello everyone,

We're already around 30 members on this mailing list, thank you for your 
interest in helping promote Open Source geospatial through the UN.

Working Group
-------------

As mentioned on the Discuss list, we/OSGeo need to continue with the 
momentum created from meetings with the UN-GIS team at FOSS4G Seoul. 
OSGeo has been invited to become involved in the "UN-GGIM Working Group 
on Geospatial Information and Services for Disasters" 
(http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/UN-GGIM-Working-Group).  I have already 
committed to help represent OSGeo at the table for that working group 
(the list of global "member states" involved is very impressive, 
including of course the OGC, Esri, and other big vendors).  But clearly 
we need to organize our effort on our side.

Related to that working group on disasters: the working group is forming 
two task teams apparently:

Task Team 1 (TT-1) will work on this goal:

**
Engage with the main stakeholders and partners from the humanitarian and 
response communities as well as
  the key governmental institutions involved in the provision of 
geospatial information and services to review,
  complement and improve the draft framework and flowcharts presented 
during the UN-GGIM Committee of Experts in
  August 2015;
**

Task Team 2 (TT-2) will work on this goal:

**
Conducted a review of frameworks, laws, rules and regulations already 
existing among the Member States
  when it comes to the provision of geospatial information and services 
in times of disasters;
**

I believe OSGeo would be well suited for the first team, TT-1, and 
having OSGeo engage the humanitarian response groups and governments 
would help us promote OSGeo and Open Source geospatial to these groups.

Actually I notice that I must submit a response to the working group by 
the end of tomorrow, on what "task team" OSGeo wants to join.  Does 
anyone object to us joining TT-1 ?

Next Meeting
------------

I realize that we must formalize this new OSGeo UN Committee (sorry for 
pushing those specific questions on you already).  Let's plan to meet, 
probably through IRC chat, for one hour to discuss this new committee.

I propose we meet on 2015-11-17 at 16:00 UTC 
(http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?year=2015&month=11&day=17&hour=16&min=0&sec=0) 
in the #osgeo channel of IRC (on freenode.net).

I have placed the meeting details on the wiki as well 
(http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/UnitedNations_Committee#Meetings).

Let me know if this plan works.  Thanks everyone,

-jeff


-- 
Jeff McKenna
President, OSGeo
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Jeff_McKenna