[Announce] OSMF Engineering Working Group inauguration

[Matt Amos]

the "Engineering Working Group"[1] is a new group set up with the
purpose of helping stimulate the development community surrounding
OSM. you don't need to be a developer to join - we're interested in
hearing from everyone and ideas are welcome. software enables us to do
the mapping we love, and to make use of the data we collect, so making
our software better is part of making OSM better.

although IRC isn't a perfect communication medium it's easy to set up
and it's interactive, so i've set one up over at #osm-ewg on OFTC.
just to kick off, i suggest a meeting next week on:

  Monday 22nd at 5pm GMT

(5pm CEST, 6pm BST, 1pm east-US, 10am pacific-US)[2] to start the conversation.

a very rough agenda for the meeting, including but certainly not limited to:
 * what are the barriers-to-entry for new developers?
 * are there small projects (perhaps mentored?) which new developers
can take on?
 * what can be done to improve the usefulness of communication between
developers and users?

hope to see you there,

matt

[1] it's not necessarily the best or most descriptive name, but it'll
do for now. other suggestions include "Development Support Group" and
"Software Working Group".
[2] yeah, i know, but no matter what time is chosen it'll be bad for
someone. i suggest we start with this and i'm open to suggestions
about rotating the time or setting up other communication channels
which are less time-zone sensitive.