New Chair: Jason Birch

[Frank Warmerdam]

Folks,

The board has appointed Jason Birch as the new chair of WebCom, and the
motion also stressed that WebCom has a mandate to produce the content of
the web site.  Discussion also suggested that some cross membership with
VisCom would be helpful to ensure that viscom activities are mentioned on
the web site, and to keep messages from conflicting.  To that end I believe
Arnulf has requested to join WebCom.

Jason also requested that our software projects try and provide representation
on webcom to ensure their needs are being served.  Arnulf can cover that for
MapBender, and I'll claim to do that for GDAL.  Perry and Fred can cover
MapServer, Jody can speak on behalf of GeoTools.  I think that just leaves
GRASS, MapBuilder and OSSIM.  I'll put out a request for involvement to those
projects but I think we have a reasonable degree of coverage.

I presume Auke Jilderda, our new CollabNet community manager will also
be joining WebCom, and can provide required backend platform access as needed.

 From my point of view, I would like to encourage WebCom to concentrate on
content development for the web site rather than technology issues around
the platform.  In the WebCom wiki there is some great material on the
OSGeo Site Focus, but we have yet to produce much in support of that.

The OSGeo slogan is "Your Open Source Compass" which is intended to indicate
that we will help guide folks through the complex landscape of open source
geospatial packages, to the packages that are right for them.  I think the
largest part of that will be accomplished here in WebCom producing content
for the web site.  I will do what I can to support that effort.

A first order of business might be to update the committee membership, adding
myself, Tyler, Arnulf, and Auke.  I think this could be done by a motion to
the mailing list if coordinating a near term irc meeting is hard.

Best regards,
-- 
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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