
\title{Nascent UK Local Chapter Update}
\subtitle{5th July 2007}
\author{Jo Cook and Leif Isaksen}

\maketitle 

After returning from FOSS4G in 2006, several UK attendees felt there was
an interest in setting up a UK local chapter for OSGeo. The following
mission statement was derived:

\begin{itemize}
\item To provide a forum for discussion and promotion of Open Source
Geospatial Software in the UK 
\item To help more UK organisations discover the opportunity of open
source geospatial tools 
\item To support the development of a fully featured
\href{http://wiki.OSGeo.org/index.php/UK_SDI}{UK SDI}\footnote{UK SDI: \url{http://wiki.OSGeo.org/index.php/UK_SDI}}
\item To provide a starting point for people from the UK who are new to
the Open Source Geospatial movement 
\item To raise awareness of the benefits of public access to geodata in
the UK 
\item To work with OGC members in the UK to promote the implementation
and development of open standards for geodata exchange 
\item To, maybe, one day, act as focal point for a UK-hosted and
organised FOSS4G conference 
\end{itemize}

To date we have had 13 expressions of interest on the wiki page.\footnote{UK Wiki page: \url{http://wiki.OSGeo.org/index.php/United\_Kingdom}} This may not seem
like a lot of people, but they are from a range of different
organisations and disciplines. There has been attendance at a number of
functions and conferences, most notably the Open Knowledge
Foundation{\textquotesingle}s Open Knowledge 1.0 conference in March
2007. There is some overlap with the OpenStreetmap Project, which is
growing in popularity and held it{\textquotesingle}s own conference
in Manchester 14-15th July 2007\footnote{OpenStreetmap conference: \url{http://www.stateofthemap.org/}}, and
discussion between the two groups has been interesting! In the UK there
is also a campaign being run by the Guardian newspaper on free access
to data of all kinds,\footnote{Free our data campaign: \url{http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/}} and again there
is a degree of overlap of interests that will be worth investigating
further.

\section{Activity}
Other than gathering expressions of interest, a specialised forum for
discussion has not yet been implemented, and interaction is mainly
informal, via related discussion groups and mailing lists, along with
attendance at geospatial conferences. Individual members are planning
attendance at FOSS4G 2007 and have submitted ideas for presentations,
awaiting the peer vote  in mid July [at least one proposal was accepted].

Individual members have also been involved in a number of initiatives
that relate to the specified missions: Oxford Archaeology\footnote{Oxford Archaeology: \url{thehumanjourney.net}} have begun to release data on the location of
their excavations via WMS/WFS, and are working on a number of software
ideas such as GIS on a USB stick. They have also begun to arrange
training courses for their staff in GRASS and QGIS as part of a
programme of evaluating open source geospatial tools within their day
to day work.

Overall -- more work is needed to build on these promising beginnings and
to gain more expressions of interest, along with a specialised forum
for discussion. Many of the issues that a local OSGeo chapter would
hope to raise are gaining public awareness within the UK, and we should
seek to be more involved in this.

\address{Joanne Cook \\
\email{j.cook AT oxfordarch.co.uk}
}

\address{Leif Isaksen \\
\email{l.isaksen AT oxfordarch.co.uk}
}
