TylerMitchell's blog

Earlier this month I had the pleasure to speak at the II Jornadas de SIG Libre (2nd meeting of the Free GIS Days) in Girona, Spain. It was hosted by University of Girona's Geographical Information Systems and Remote Sensing Service (SIGTE).

The event surpassed my expectations ...

OSGeo got some great publicity last month when I was recently interviewed by James Gray from the Linux Journal. It was great to meet him and to also learn about his interest in geospatial. If you poke around their web site, you will notice at least one other open source GIS article in the Linux Journal as well.

Tyler Mitchell
2-March-2008

Last month we announced the release of Volume 3 of the OSGeo Journal. This edition presents 14 papers from presenters at the FOSS4G 2007 conference. Now that the collecting, editing, typesetting and publishing is complete, I'm looking forward to a leisurely re-read of the material as a reader.

We are already starting to gather a sizable collection for Volume 4 which is targeted to be published by the end of March 2008. It will also serve as the publication of our 2007 Annual Report for OSGeo. You will be hearing more about this as I send out requests for input from the various projects and committees. I'm really looking forward to this next volume as it will be a very informative community document about our first full year of operations.

But before that volume is published, the Journal team will be re-grouping to look back on the first year of their efforts. I always considered this first year to be a Beta period to see how much work it would be, how many people would help and how much content is available to be published.

Since the first volume in May we've had more editors, reviewers and proof-readers come forward to offer their help.

The first year of the Journal saw many interesting articles and served various purposes: community news, announcements, project introductions, case studies and more. If there is an aspect of the Journal that you saw as particular useful or an area that you think it totally missed, please give us your feedback - both positive and constructively negative - by emailing me or using our feedback form. Looking forward to hearing any of your ideas.

Best wishes for 2008!

Tyler Mitchell
10-JAN-2008

The OSGeo board has recently started talking about putting together an Annual Report for 2007 - our first full year of operations. I had hoped to make some headway on this before FOSS4G but the timing didn't work out.

In the meantime, we haven't gone totally without any reports, though maybe they are not advertised well enough. I'll mention a few of them here in case you are not already familiar with them and would like to keep updated.

This year's Annual General Meeting at FOSS4G was a great success. It was our first attempt to bring together reports from the board, projects, local chapters and committees - all describing what they have done over the past year or are planning for the future. The kinds of content presented at that meeting would be similar to what feeds into an Annual Report, though instead of requesting written reports I asked representatives to speak face-to-face with the membership. We had over 25 speakers/topics presented at that meeting!

Another deliberate way we foster communication has been through the OSGeo Journal - including reports from projects, local chapters and more. These first two issues were a bit of an experiment to see how regularly we could get reports from parts of our community without pestering them too much. When we started the Journal the hope was to use it as an outlet for producing reports on a regular basis. It has worked out well so far, but has been a lot of work. If you are interested in encouraging more dialogue in this semi-formal way, you are welcome to join the Journal team as an editor. This is the benefit of a volunteer organisation, everyone is welcome to participate to make things happen :)

My OSGeo Blog is also used to provide reports to the community, sponsors and the public. Though not as regular as they could be, I've tried to pull together short reports with critical information on important occasions. This included a year in review post summarising some highlights from our first year, as well as various other stats. I encourage other OSGeo members to blog about their own OSGeo work/involvement, all of which would be helpful for feeding into an Annual Report.

We also have lots of discussion on the OSGeo discussion mailing list and throughout project lists, the board of directors and more. Naturally this the key way we communicate within OSGeo and everyone is welcome to participate.

One key development over the past few months has been the establishment of an OSGeo Finance Committee. This 5 person group will help facilitate financial decisions, planning and reporting without relying solely on the Treasurer or having to always defer final decisions back the Board. This will certainly help on several fronts, as we have recently just passed our first full year of having funds to manage and report on.

So, as several of us ponder how to pull together the information needed for a more formal Annual Report, I hope you will also consider how you might help to make it happen. It will take a major amount of input and coordination to get it right but it will help build on these other communication efforts over the past year.

Consider this your invitation to help!

Tyler Mitchell
23-Nov-2007

I feel as if I've been in orbit for the last week, flying high above the Earth, floating through a sea of ideas and latent energy. Metaphors aside, the FOSS4G event has left me both overwhelmed with admiration and bubbling with enthusiasm.

The most powerful memories I am taking away from the event are about conversations with other attendees. I greatly admire the many people I met and the various ideas and philosophies they presented -- these will surely echo in my mind and in our community consciousness for a long time to come.

Overview

For me, the week started with one of the most productive board meetings we've had in a long time. The OSGeo Board of Directors doesn't get to meet face to face very often, but sure took advantage of it last Sunday. There was fruitful discussion about promotional priorities, financial management initiatives, a rough budget was sketched out for 2008, and more. It was also a good time to welcome our three new board members Bob Bray, Jeroen Ticheler and Paul Ramsey.

On Monday, Jeff McKenna and I led an intro to MapServer workshop. We missed our usual co-presenter Perry, but it still went over fine. I didn't get to see any of the other workshops or labs, but heard they were all packed full and very productive. Attendees will, no doubt, provide the usual feedback asking for more or larger workshop spaces. It seems our attendees are always hungry for more hands-on workshops. Perhaps local chapters can consider how to address some of those needs.

That evening we held the first ever OSGeo Annual General Meeting. Over 200 people attended to hear Local Chapter updates, software project updates and committee reports. It was a fast-paced presentation format that helped us to meet each other and to learn about activities and the people behind them. Thank you to all the presenters who participated in the meeting - it was a great success.

The OSGeo booth got underway on Tuesday. Our space was large and quite open, and always filled with people. We had lots of brochures, advertisements and other material to hand out; it was all gone by the end of the week. As usual, I came away with specific ideas for improving our presence at these kinds of events. And, as usual, they were the same ideas -- we need to revamp our brochures and get some professional print quality design as well as prepare some animated self-running demos of our software. The excellent GeoNetwork brochures are a good example of the kinds of product we could use. Thank you very much for those who stayed around the booth answering questions. A special thanks to Mateusz who camped out there for most of the week.

During my time in the booth I spoke with dozens of people from several countries and projects. The overwhelming questions were from groups or individuals who have an open source project, or who want to turn a project into open source, and want to know where to begin. This ties into the recent Discuss list thread about supporting small/start-up projects. People wanted to know how they could get the word out about their project and/or how to get it under the OSGeo umbrella.

The closing plenary session was interesting, with Adena helping to provide a review/summary of her observations at the event. There was also an eclectic group of people on the closing panel that helped to stir up some further thinking and discussion. Perhaps the most memorable part of the panel discussion was Tim Bowden elegantly describing that GIS is dead, as it becomes increasingly consumed by I.T. in general.

It is a tradition to give the Sol Katz Award to recognise a member of the open source geospatial commnunity. This year's award was given to Steve Lime, the father of the MapServer project. So many of us were introduced to open source through the MapServer that the award is more than well deserved. Congratulations Steve!

Summary

The whole week feels like a bit of a blur. I'm sure it was the same for many attendees who wanted to see more presentations than was humanly possible, or who wanted to keep talking with colleagues until the wee morning hours. I don't think I was alone for more than 5 hours the whole week, whether it was chatting at the booth, talking over dinner or debating with my roommates. During all these discussions about projects, events, promotional ideas and more, a couple recurring themes popped up. Here are just two of them:

Collaboration -- Projects and people seem more willing to work together than ever before. While this has always been a cornerstone of OSGeo projects, the momentum continues to build. There was a lot of discussion about projects that could potentially work closer together, share code, etc. Similarly, local chapters will continue to develop as people in common areas or languages work together to promote our projects.

Cartography -- Not too long ago cartography used to refer to printed maps, which many recognise as a weak area in open source. This is a continual discussion point for our communities: how to produce high-quality printed maps. Fortunately we have a lot of expertise on this topic within our communities. Last week I spoke to several people about filling this need by having a separate project focused on the problem. There was general agreement that a project built on standards like SLD and other XML data/configuration items could really help us focus. The main benefit being that other projects could output to this engine instead of each writing their own. I'll write more about this in the near future.

Thanks, thanks and more thanks

My talk on Thursday was about OSGeo as a "Community of Communities". You've probably heard this before, but it was never so obvious then when at FOSS4G. 700 people speaking many different languages, from dozens of countries, using or representing dozens of projects -- all contributed to the sense that you were at a global technology bazaar. As others have noted, this wasn't just a great OSGeo event, or even just a great geospatial event. It was just a great conference. Period.

Thanks to Paul Ramsey for taking the lead to deliver such a high-quality energy packed event. Thanks to the conference sponsors for helping make it happen. Thanks to all the attendees for participating to make it a most memorable week for all who attended.

Like a freight-train on a roller coaster track, FOSS4G is swinging by to pick up its ~700 registered attendees this weekend. Next week is packed full of exciting meetings and opportunities to learn more about open source geospatial software and its users. I may have bitten off more than I can chew for tasks at the event, but I just couldn't resist trying to squeeze every drop of value out of it. Here are some of the things to watch out for and, generally, where you'll find me during the week.

MapServer 101 Workshop

For a fourth year in a row, Jeff McKenna, Perry Nacionales (in absentia) and I will will put on our annual, sold out, introductory MapServer workshop. This year is the biggest crowd ever, over 80 pupils and likely no standing room for lurkers. If you are coming to it, feel free to introduce yourself by dropping me a note and tell us anything in particular you hope to get out of the workshop.

As an aside, a couple years ago we pulled together a MapServer Reference Guide for Vector Data Formats, specifically as a resource for pupils at this workshop. You can browse a copy here or download a PDF here.

OSGeo Annual General Meeting

This year we are hosting a more official get-together for OSGeo members and the broader community. On Monday evening, after the workshops at FOSS4G, there will be a 90 minute meeting including many reports updating you on the activities of OSGeo. You'll hear from our President, Frank Warmerdam, along with more than a dozen other project leaders and local chapter organisers. I hope you will join us for this informal meeting, especially if you are new to the OSGeo or want to meet many others face-to-face.

OSGeo Booth

During the FOSS4G exhibition OSGeo will have an exhibit booth area for users, members, sponsors and others to come and meet each other. Come to our booth in the centre of the exhibition hall to pick up propaganda, meet others and chat, or use the Internet Cafe to check your webmail to see what's up all your OSGeo mailing lists ;-). If you have a program, product or web site that shows off integration of open source apps, feel free to stop by and help promote the software by demonstrating it to others at the booth.

As usual, I will be at the booth, but can always use more help. If you have an hour or two to spare, stop by, say hello, and tell me to take five. I'll also have a video recorder handy for taking some impromptu interviews or news from the floor. No promises, but I hope to get some sort of streaming video online from the booth. You never know, you might even get some from a couple of the presentations... Watch here for more information.

Birds of a Feather Meetings

As usual, the BoF meetings are a hot topic leading up to the event. We have many people organising meet-ups - from casual "let's get together and chat about an idea" to "let's plan out the next year's plan of attack for X project"... it's a wide range of goals and concepts.

Keep your eyes posted during the registration desks for any last minute changes to the BoF schedule or room assignments, or to post your own! Try to keep the wiki page up to date as well. Warning - time is tight and rooms are too. Planning for a meet-up in a pub may end up being your best alternative if things get full.

Lots More....

Of course there are many great presentations, workshops and labs planned for the week as well. There is also the Code Sprint, Integration Demonstrations and much, much more.

Watch for press releases and announcements that are sure to pop up during the event.

Photos

If you are going to be at the event and have a camera (or your are at home lamenting the fact you are at home) tune into Flickr and tag your photos with "foss4g2007" - here they are so far. There is also a FOSS4G2007 Flickr Group.

I'm looking forward to meeting some new faces and seeing many of you face-to-face. Don't hesitate to drop by the booth or nudge me in the hallway if you want to chat.

Best wishes for you and your week,
Tyler

I just compiled a quick list showing the numbers of subscribers to each of the OSGeo hosted mailing lists. I found the results quite interesting and now want to dig into the stats from projects that have externally hosted mailing lists.

Here were the top ten in terms of number of subscribers:

List	Subscribers
ANNOUNCE	630
MAPGUIDE-USERS	560
DISCUSS	537
MAPBENDER_USERS	258
AFRICA	151
MAPGUIDE-ANNOUNCE	143
SPANISH	137
MAPGUIDE-INTERNALS	136
WEBMAP-DISCUSS	102
OTTAWA_USERS	99

That's over 2,700 subscribers on 10 lists. Over all the lists there are over 4,000 subscribers. Of course there is some overlap between the people who are registered, but I still personally found it interesting.

But the big question... who will be the 100th Ottawa Local Chapter subscriber? ;-)

Financial

I've been working on getting a process in place for reporting on the financial picture behind OSGeo. We are currently moving to an online system for tracking our accounts as well, so reporting and tracking can be done collaboratively with those managing the finances.

We continue to receive more project level sponsors (i.e. GDAL/OGR sponsors) as well as additional Associate level sponsors for OSGeo (i.e. Firstbasesolutions). There a few others sponsors waiting in the wings.

Having a good picture of historic and planned finances is required for our pending charitable status application. As we dug into this application process it brought up some questions that we have yet to address - i.e. plans for generating revenue.

We've never had any real commitment to revenue targets - how many donors, how much from grants, who is responsible for doing it all, etc. - so it is hard to show that we have a plan for meeting our budget expenditures. Autodesk is still committed to helping fund the start-up of OSGeo in the short term but to be truly sustainable we must augment that with additional funds.

Update: my mistake, we do have an Income Projection developed by the Fundraising Committee

Fundraising

Now is as good a time as any to start thinking about strategies, options and alternatives for raising funds. If you have some ideas you want to contribute, I encourage you to join the Fundraising Committee mailing list and share them with the group.

When we get through the 501c3 (charitable tax exempt status) application process, it becomes more feasible to pursue non-profit or government grants which often require the 501c3 process to be started. This means planning ahead for the kinds of revenue we believe we can generate. It doesn't have to be a complicated plan, but it is worthy of a conversation amongst the membership and the board.

We must show that we are not only daydreaming about meeting our budget requirements, but that we have some real targets in mind. Over the remainder of the year, I am hoping that the Fundraising Committee (and the Board?) can focus on finding new sponsors and donors. Then when we are done the charitable status application I can focus more directly on applying for grants.

Early on we spun fundraising into its own committee, but others have been telling me that it is a primary role for a non-profit board. While staff can focus on the more labour intensive grant applications. Perhaps having it as one of the board's main tasks would help put more weight behind fundraising. What kinds of experiences have others had in this area?

I have spoken to several members who have grant-writing experience and I believe we have some great opportunities out there - especially for developing educational material and developing/delivering workshops across many domains.

I just wrapped up the nomination and election process for new Charter Members. I believe it was very successful - with 93% turnout (that's only 3 votes not received) and about 70% of the votes going to the top 15 nominees - so it was very representative of the groups wishes.

It was a busy couple of weeks - lining up all the nominations, confirming with nominees, confirming that all charter members received the instructions for voting, tabulating votes, following up with several reminders, contacting all nominees, publishing the results, etc.

With the new Charter Member election out of the way, next we will be updating the Board of Directors. There is a requirement that we regularly replace half of the Board. This helps keep things fresh and avoid lots of other hypothetical problems - the least of which is potential burn-out.

Five of the current board members will be replaced, as per Proposed Board Election Procedure. Current Board members have the option to:

1. step down and stand for re-election
2. resign
3. be randomly selected to step down or resign

In a couple days I will apply a random filter to select the 5 who will be removed (the others remain on for another year).

Then we will start a nomination process to elect some of the Charter Members into Board of Director seats. If you are a Charter Member, I encourage you to start brainstorming about who from the other Charter Members list you think would be best for helping lead OSGeo into the next two years. Nominations and voting will be limited to the Charter Members.

On another election-related note, I am helping run the Francophone (French speaking) Chapter elections. They are organising into an official Local Chapter and are currently choosing the chairs of various committees.

Membership Management

Every time we talk about membership I am reminded of the need for some membership management tools. It might have something to do with going from 45 to 59 members and having the list scroll off the bottom of my screen now.

I have recently been testing the CiviCRM application and it looks promising for our kind of organisation. It comes integrated into our CMS which is a bonus.

CiviCRM allows members to sign themselves up as members, opt-in to various groups, submit donations, manage and volunteer for events and more. If you have experience using it, please let me know so I can reduce my learning curve and hear what you think of it.

Journal - Volume 2

Volume 2 is coming over the horizon quickly and articles are starting to come in.

We are getting to the point where some people are starting to come to us with requests to publish their material. This is encouraging for several reasons and will hopefully continue in the longer term.

Interest is increasing partly because we are offering an option to have articles go through peer review. Daniel Ames is helping run a true peer review process. This will help provide a venue for our academic writers who have publication needs.

We have also offered to publish proceedings for FOSS4G 2007, again to help those who want their papers to get extra distribution and review.

In general, the Journal effort is turning out to be quite an interesting way of building external interest in OSGeo and educating public readers about a wide range of software, topics and news.

On that note, I would really like to have a good update from your project, local chapter or committee - any volunteers?

I have also been reviewing some journal management software that looks quite promising. Venka pointed me to the Open Journal System which helps manage the review/editing process as well as receiving submissions, feeding up metadata to search repositories, posting online versions, etc.

If you've used it before and want to help get it tested for our needs, please let me know. It would be really interesting to backload the last volume so we can put it through its paces.

FOSS4G Conference

We are well into FOSS4G planning - next on the list is accepting presentations. You have only a couple days left (June 29th) to submit proposals for presentations. The final presentation roster will be decided by July 15th. There will also be an opportunity for you to be part of a Community Review process to help select the presentations.