I'm always looking for more ways to summarise statistics about OSGeo
and was reminded recently about some of the good work shown here - a
map and a member list based on wiki categories and properties:
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Category:OSGeo_Member
It's not a definitive list but is nice work, I'm not sure who to pat
on the back - good job!
I've been trying to get to a place where I can get a list of Members,
charter members, list of chapters and their members, projects and the
members of their steering committees, etc. Not so easy.
One way I like to present things during talks is by using graphical
representations of the OSGeo ecosystem. Some of you have seen the
Freemind Mindmap approach I used before.[1] I've also been able to
start to pull wiki pages and their links to other pages out into a
similar mindmap format. See this test page for experiments based on
my user page [2]. Memory and other issues prevent from doing too
much more online in real-time though, and the tests might fail, but
you get the idea.
These use the Semantic Mediawiki extension which also provides a
powerful tool for querying the wiki. You can add properties to pages
(which I haven't explored yet), but even without them you can query
across Categories. Here is one example of querying for all the pages
tagged as "OSGeo Member" and also related to a "Local Chapters" [3].
And a more refined search that only shows User accounts that are
tagged as member pages and also with Local Chapter tags [4]. Bit of
a mind-bender but pretty neat when you see what it is really doing.
I'm wondering if we can get more out of the wiki using these fancy
tools, without a lot of manual leg work. It leaves me wondering if a
simple form-based, user/member tracking tool might help - so members
can simply select which projects/committees they are on, providing a
simple record for generating reports from.
What do you think - is editing the wiki a higher barrier then filling
in some forms? Would it feel more "official" if you had to fill in a
form and click "become an OSGeo Member"? :)
p.s. You can also output RDF though I haven't used it for much yet,
and not sure it is really working [5]
[1] Slide 8 & 9 show mindmap: http://svn.osgeo.org/osgeo/community/
presentations/20070925-Victoria/OSGeoCommunity.html
[2] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Test_Graphs
[3] http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php?
title=Special:Ask&offset=0&limit=500&q=+%5B%5BCategory%3ALocal
+Chapters%7CCategory%3AOSGeo+Member%5D%5D&p=format%3Dbroadtable
[4] http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php?
title=Special:Ask&offset=0&limit=500&q=%5B%5B%3A%2B%7C%7CUser%3A%2B%5D
%5D+%5B%5BCategory%3AOSGeo+Member%5D%5D+%5B%5BCategory%3ALocal
+Chapters%5D%5D&p=format%3Dbroadtable
[5] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Special:ExportRDF/
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