\title{OSGeo Celebrates 1st Anniversary}
\author{by Tyler Mitchell}
\maketitle

February 4th, 2007 was the first anniversary of OSGeo.  One year ago 25 people
met face-to-face, and many more via phone and IRC, to discuss the possibility
of starting an umbrella organisation.  These participants represented over 13
different open source projects.  The foundational purpose of the organisation
was to help promote and continue to develop open source tools in the
geospatial sphere.  Since that time, much has happened and momentum around
OSGeo continues to develop.  Here are only a few highlights from that first
year. 

\section{Members Added}

The initial 25 charter members were expanded to a full 45 voting members after
a public nomination process.  These are the members who are responsible for
voting in the Board.  Regular members were also invited to join at no cost and
without any formal process.  The development of a membership management
application is currently underway, which will allow members to formally sign
up. 

\section{Committees Established}

Several committees are overseeing day-to-day work and special projects: 

\begin{itemize}
\item A {\bf Board of Directors} was created early on and expanded to include
9 representatives from around the world.  The Board has been very active in
setting direction, policies and helping in general.  
\item {\bf Website} and {\bf Systems Administration} committees - focused on
website content and infrastructure maintenance and development  
\item Project {\bf Incubation} - monitoring and guiding projects through the
incubation process  
\item {\bf Promotion and Visibility} - developing promotional material,
coordinating OSGeo presence at conferences, creating press releases  
\item {\bf Conference} planning - helping organise the annual OSGeo FOSS4G
conference event  
\item {\bf Fundraising} - raising funds to cover day-to-day costs of the
foundation and its projects  
\item {\bf Public Geospatial Data} - working towards making more data publicly
available and building tools for finding it  
\item {\bf Education/Curriculum} development - working towards a set of
teaching tools for bringing open source into the academic mapping and GIS
environment 
\end{itemize}

\section{Projects Joining}

The primary goal of OSGeo is to help further develop and promote particular
software projects.  An initial set of projects joined the incubation process
at the beginning and since then a couple have graduated and a few more have
joined.  Even more are waiting for approval to join the process\footnote{QGIS and FDO joined in early 2007 after this report was written and during OSGeo's second year.}.  Projects can be loosely categorised into the following groupings. 

\subsection{Web Mapping Software} 

\begin{itemize}
\item Mapbender (graduated)
\item Community MapBuilder (graduated) 
\item MapGuide Open Source (graduated)
\item MapServer
\item OpenLayers
\end{itemize}

\subsection{Desktop Applications} 

\begin{itemize}
\item GRASS GIS  
\item OSSIM 
\item Quantum GIS (joined in 2007)
\end{itemize}

\subsection{Geospatial Libraries} 

\begin{itemize}
\item FDO (joined in 2007)
\item GDAL/OGR  
\item GeoTools 
\end{itemize}

\subsection{Metadata Catalog Software} 

\begin{itemize}
\item GeoNetwork Opensource 
\end{itemize}

Together these projects represent a massive amount of development effort and
cover a wide spectrum of core geospatial technologies.  All projects are being
actively developed and have vibrant user communities behind them. 

\section{Local Chapter Development}

OSGeo's goals and mission have garnered interest from many particular
countries, regions and language groups.  Early on it was decided that there
should be a way for these groups to associate with OSGeo, hence the creation
of Local Chapters.  

To date there are 4 approved local chapters in: {\bf China}, {\bf India}, {\bf
Japan} and {\bf Ottawa} (Canada).\footnote{New Mexico state (USA) chapter was approved early 2007.}

Many additional local chapters are hoping to form and at various stages of
development, including: {\bf Australian}, {\bf Brazilian}, (USA) regions and {\bf French}, {\bf German}, {\bf Italian} languages. 

\section{Promotion / Events}

OSGeo has been represented at several events in the past year.  Some with
several thousands of participants.  The purpose of having OSGeo presence at
events is to build awareness for the OSGeo projects.  Speakers and those
managing an OSGeo booth help describe case studies or show demonstrations of
applications.  Brochures for each project have been made available and are
distributed.

The primary international conference that OSGeo members were involved in is
FOSS4G.  The conference was a great success and very encouraging. 

Planning for the FOSS4G 2007 event is already well underway.\footnote{Registration for the event is now open.}

Here are a few other events that OSGeo has had speakers or exhibition presence
at in 2006 or early 2007: 

\begin{itemize}
\item Autodesk University  
\item GIS-IDEAS  
\item Intergeo 
\item LinuxTag  
\item Map World Forum  
\item OSCON  
\item Where 2.0 
\end{itemize}

\section{Newsletter}

OSGeo is joining with the famous GRASS GIS Newsletter to produce a new version
that is targetted at a wider audience.  A joint GRASS/OSGeo Newsletter was
produced in 2006.  Further OSGeo newsletters are planned for 2007.  [You are currently reading the results of this change.]

\section{Executive Director Hired}

In November I was hired by the board as the Executive Director for OSGeo.  The
goal of the position is to help facilitate day-to-day administrative
operations, increase communication and serve as a formal contact for those who
need to talk to the organisation.  Having this position has allowed us to get
a handle on various administrative functions and provided a consistent point
of contact for the community, public, sponsors and media. 

\section{Additional Developments}

\begin{itemize}
\item Several new sponsors - In addition to continuing Sustaining Sponsor
Autodesk, new Associate Sponsors include Lizardtech and 1Spatial.\footnote{First Base Solutions also recently joined as an Associate Sponsor}  The GDAL/OGR project also has several project sponsors.  
\item A logo was selected for the organisation, based on submissions and
voting from the community.  Some modifications of the original were recently
completed to make the logo more usable for various printing and media
purposes.  A brand guidebook is also being developed. 
\end{itemize}

\begin{figure}[htbp]
\begin{center}
\includegraphics[width=0.75\textwidth]{tex_support/OSGeo_wTag}
\caption{The official OSGeo logo}
\label{default}
\end{center}
\end{figure}


\begin{itemize}
\item A cafepress.com store was started  
\item Internet infrastructure services were upgraded at the end of 2006,
allowing for more control over mailing lists and code repositories as well as
implementing a content management system for the website
\item OSGeo has been featured in various news web sites and mentioned at
several conferences and in magazine articles [See the event reports section of this Journal for specific examples].
\end{itemize}

\section{The Horizon for Year 2}

I will leave the outlook for 2007 to another post, but it's looking to be even
busier than 2006.  Here are a couple things to watch for: 

\begin{itemize}
\item Formation of more local chapters  
\item More software projects joining OSGeo  
\item How to participate in international and local events  
\item More great features added and bugs squished 
\item Increased promotional opportunities  
\item FOSS4G in Victoria, BC, Canada 
\end{itemize}
