Brief Update

Hi everybody, here is just a brief update of some of the things on my radar at the moment. If you see an opportunity to work together on any of them, or if you want to find a reason to get together, drop me a note.

Journal and Annual Report

As many of you already know, the OSGeo Annual Report compilation is underway. With a few days left to get reports in, I hope you will pester others in your project steering committee or local chapter to submit something - even something very brief. OSGeo has been pretty light on reporting requirements, so this annual requirement shouldn't be too much effort. In fact, I think it very beneficial for our groups to take a moment to reflect and consider how they've progressed during 2008. When compilation is complete, then it will be rolled together with a few other articles into OSGeo Journal Volume 5. Watch for it later in the month.

If you have extra time on your hands and want to help edit upcoming issues of the journal - join the Journal mailing list and introduce yourself. We're moving to a powerful online management system called the Open Journal System. It's taking some getting used to, but will really help make it possible to undertake peer review and easier submission/management between different editors.

Marketing

As noted in previous posts we have several projects on the go. The one that's mostly on my plate is to oversee getting design work completed for some brochures, templates and other items that are in high demand by local chapters and events worldwide. The aim is to have reusable file formats and ones that are easily edited or updated in the future. Watch for more on this in the upcoming month.

This month several of us had the opportunity to contribute to the Open Source Business Resource Journal. Edited by Dave McIlhagga, including contributions by myself, Paul Ramsey, Mark Lucas, Scott Bortman, Andrew Ross, Haris Kurtagic and Geoff Zeiss. Good work guys and thank you to the OSBR for the great opportunity.

OSGeo will have a booth at the (huge) upcoming American Association of Geographers (AAG) event 22-26 March. Thanks to Alex Mandel for taking the lead on organising this with his colleagues at UC Davis. Also to the other volunteers who are helping speak and maintain our presence there.

Paul Ramsey is also helping to organise our presence at O'Reilly's Where 2.0 event 19-21 May. There is always a stellar line-up of folks who are friends of OSGeo and our relatives. I'm not sure if I'll be attending, but if you are going to be then you might want to mention it on the OSGeo Discuss list to see who else is going.

Supporting Your Event

I'm always wary of giving a false sense of hope, but if you know of a critical event in your region or domain that OSGeo could make a splash at in the future - please join the Marketing mailing list and introduce your idea. We don't really sponsor events, but we do expect to help with a few different ones - usually not through sponsoring but through exhibiting, speaking or generally helping spread OSGeo project information.

One warning though, be prepared to help organise or develop the idea if you really want to see it happen. The Marketing group is focused this year on developing the material mentioned above, and making sure this gets into the hands of as many people as possible who will be at events around the world.

Sponsorship

This is the time of year where several of our esteemed OSGeo Sponsors come up for renewal, so I've had my head in the books a bit more than usual this past month. On the topic of sponsors, if you ever have any suggestions for sponsors that are a good fit for OSGeo (or any of the projects that are underway), I'd love to hear about it. We can chat about it, or you can drop me an email to get the ball rolling.

Events and Meetings

In a few months it will be about one year of reduced travel at my end. My wife had a nasty knee injury, but her surgery has worked out great. Now I'm starting to get any speaking opportunities and meetings lined up for later in the spring/summer.

• The next event I am planning to attend is the First Open Source GIS UK Conference in Nottingham, June 22nd. I have several opportunities for talks and meetings that are starting to line up. If you are nearby (e.g. anywhere in the UK) and would like to meet, please let me know, I'm always keen to see what people are doing with OSGeo software, local chapters, education and more.
• GeoWeb Vancouver is a great place to meet up with several OSGeo people. I expect to attend there in July and look forward to seeing others.
• FOSS4G Sydney of course... 20-23 Oct. The marketing group is just starting to talk about preparing for an OSGeo booth there. If you are interested in helping coordinate our exhibition floor presence, get a front and centre visible position, etc... there is an opportunity to help. Prior experience with such an effort would be ideal.

What else is on your agenda that I should attend or could help with in some way? I'm sure I've forgotten more than I remember!