On 11/25/2011 12:30 PM, Dimitris Kotzinos wrote:
Hi all,
now that the issue on the North America chapter is settled and
explained, what about forming an European chapter in order to also
promote inside-EU (especially but not only) cooperation and policies
for Open Source and Open Standards in Geographic Information?
This would also help people from smaller countries to participate in
the OSGEO movement and probably provide some possibilities to apply
for funding at the EU level.
This is an interesting discussion. Also earlier today (European time :)
there was a mail from Dan Ames, which mentioned FOSS4G mini-conference
in Netherlands, June 2012. I also think I saw an email about FOSS4G CEE
(Central and Eastern Europe) very recently.
In Europe there are already a number of established FOSS for
geospatial/geoinformatics conferences (FOSSGIS and OSGIS come to mind).
There's also FOSDEM (not digital elevation model but developer's
European meeting) which could also be used for OSGeo people to meet.
This is probably a good thing and there's no reason to try to coordinate
it too much. We need many types of conferences and meetings: academic,
education-oriented, hacker, commercial, etc.
Surely it is a good idea to seek EU funding. In the edu list there was
some discussion to try to get EU COST funds for collaboration within
this area (next deadline end of March, we're still seeking for a good
academic to be the main coordinator).
Although I know that there are already probably enough organizations,
the way I see things evolving this would probably be much helpful.
Moreover for me it seems that if we will be organizing major events
like a North America conference it would become increasingly difficult
to be able to keep supporting an annual global event like the current
FOSS4G conference. So an additional idea for consideration might be to
have a bi-annual global event and in the meantime regional events.
Of course this will not bring the global community closer.
But it would probably make the community bigger and more active, which
is good.
If there is enough interest to work towards an European Chapter I
would be happy to contribute.
As you said and I agree, European chapter would be good for smaller
countries, where a country-specific chapter is often not very viable
(like Finland :)
But the main thing is that we choose wisely where to spend our energy. I
don't want to spend it all on institution or organization building, I'm
much happier hacking.
Ari
Best regards,
Dimitris Kotzinos
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