[Local-chapters] community building + local chapters?

Wed Aug 22 11:36:00 UTC 2018

Accidentaly did not include the local-chapters mailing list!

Hi Christoph,

> Since OpenStreetMap traditionally attracts a lot of people who do not
> consider themselves to belong to any kind of organized community i
> would suggest to not engross these by implying your effort includes or
> speaks for the whole OSM community or that community in OSM always
> means some kind of centralized organization.
>

My words "LCWG is now also the "community working group"" should not be
taken that way, at all. It was a way to briefly describe what was outlined
in my original post.

> I would also like to point out that one important reason for local
> chapters and informal local organizations working together is to create
> a counterweight and corrective to the centralized OSMF and its working
> groups.  Forming a working group does not necessarily preclude this but
> the mentioned function is something that ultimately requires
> cooperation also outside the constraints of a working group.
>

Unless of course this is a somewhat more liberal working group than the
usual ones.

> > During the talks leading up to this, a lot of ideas and priorities
> > came up. I have a decent overview of those. I propose that I create
> > an issue for every one of those at
> > https://github.com/osmfoundation/lcwg .
>
> Frankly i am fairly strongly against using github for general discussion
> on topics that should be open for the whole community.  I think it
> would be best to keep general discussion on ideas and cooperations on
> the mailing list (or on a forum channel if that is preferred) and use
> the wiki for documentation needs and only use external platforms when
> there are substantial needs for that (although i would - as said
> before - prefer it if we work towards having a project management and
> issue tracking platform within OSM for this kind of thing).
>

There is a clear majority in favor of working with Github, and there is the
precedent of the SotM working group organizing themselves there. I support
working towards a better alternative, but I do not support exclusively
sticking to mailing lists.

> I would very much welcome people starting discussing specific ideas and
> problems here because i have currently rather limited knowledge what
> other local chapters would like to pursue in cooperation.  Some points
> were brought up in Milano, in particular recruitment of people to
> participate in local chapter work and the desire to exchange ideas
> about methods to support this.
>

That is something a mailing list might be a rather good place for. Feel
free to start a new topic on this.

> > [...] I would suggest we schedule a time that we're all at the
> > Matrix/Riot/IRC/Telegram channel, but in my experience voice meetings
> > seem to be more productive (though a bit more complicated to get
> > involved in).
>
> Similar argument here - i would try to avoid proprietary commercial
> platforms (and for an official OSMF WG this would also be demanded by
> the FOSS policy).
>

Only Telegram is proprietary among those AFAIK, and that's only linked. Are
you proposing not to make it possible for people who prefer Telegram to
connect to the Matrix room?

> In general real time synchronous conversation (both text and voice)
> disadvantages people with limited English abilities so doing as much as
> possible in asynchroneous conversation is advisable in multilingual
> groups.
>

I do not agree here. Mailing lists (the asynchronous) have exactly the same
issue. Apart from that, since any message has a more permanent feel to it,
people with lesser English skills might find it a higher barrier to post
there. While a mailing list is excellent for deep discourse, for actually
understanding each other it also has a higher barrier in my opinion. One
takes apart the other's message and addresses it bit by bit. Synchronous
conversation is in smaller bits and pieces, which makes it less daunting to
participate, and allows to quickly get to the bottom of smaller issues.
Anyway, the whole idea with using different media (mailing list AND chat
AND meetings AND github) is to maximize participation by allowing people to
use the medium of their preference rather than imposing something.

> For synchroneous meetings Mumble has the advantage of allowing both
> voice and text communication and it is already used by the OSMF (board
> and some WGs).
>

Mumble sounds good for live meetings. The Riot client for Matrix comes with
integration with Jitsi, I have reasonably good experience with that.

In conclusion, I will continue the course outlined above. If that is too
far removed from what a working group can and should do, then the work
being done will just be from an informal group. I'm not convinced that is
necesary. I'd also like to avoid the proposed meeting to be too much about
this possible issue. It should be about actual stuff we can do, lest we
scare enthousiastic people away with this procedural talk. If we need some
sort of official meeting to conclude the topic of "extended LCWG or not",
let's schedule that separately.

-- 
Joost Schouppe
OpenStreetMap <http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/joost%20schouppe/> |
Twitter <https://twitter.com/joostjakob> | LinkedIn
<https://www.linkedin.com/pub/joost-schouppe/48/939/603> | Meetup
<http://www.meetup.com/OpenStreetMap-Belgium/members/97979802/>

-- 
Joost Schouppe
OpenStreetMap <http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/joost%20schouppe/> |
Twitter <https://twitter.com/joostjakob> | LinkedIn
<https://www.linkedin.com/pub/joost-schouppe/48/939/603> | Meetup
<http://www.meetup.com/OpenStreetMap-Belgium/members/97979802/>
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