John Smith <delta_foxt...@...> writes: > > > Just to let everyone know what's happening, the guy I work for has become interested in both helping the > community and to get into selling mapping services. He also has numerous business connections. > > There has already been some unofficial talks with a company that makes phone handsets with GPS/3G and they > seem willing to donate quite a number of these for some kind of schools/education programme. > > The idea is the phones would be lent out on a per month basis, along with an education pack describing all the > ways schools can get involved in various activities, hopefully it can be made fun and exciting. :) > > For this to happen there needs to be some kind of official presence for these companies to deal with, if they > donate goods it has to be owned by some entity, as the company offering phones won't want to deal with > schools directly. > > Most government departments don't like dealing with individuals so there needs to be an official group > behind this. > > I don't know if starting a local chapter would be the best solution, but on the other hand things might be made > more difficult, if things default to OSMF in the UK. > > However before any of this can occur I really need to know if people have a genuine concern with setting up a > local chapter or not.
I've been thinking about this for the last 6+ months, after the local chapter idea was first mentioned on the Talk mailing list. Mostly in relation to contacting potential sources of data who would be willing to submit their data compatible with the OSM license (federal/state departments, local councils, trucking companies etc.) Being backed by some form of official entity would make the discussions much easier, who wants to be thought of as a few nerds doing their own hobby for fun (which might be correct, but ignores all the advantages of having world-wide open mapping data). I've had some discussions with the GIS boss of my local council, but it seems copyright of most data ends up with state & federal agencies, most of the remaining data is tainted by sharing boundries/nodes with existing copyright data :-( Therefore, I support the local chapter idea, even if I don't yet know what is involved. BlueMM _______________________________________________ Talk-au mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
