Keeping up to date...

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