[Osmf-talk] Local Chapters criteria

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 7/20/19 15:00, martin at noblecourt.eu wrote:
> Would be interesting to aim at having a complete overview of the status
> of OSM in each country/region

Definitely - this would be a worthy goal even outside of concrete local
chapter questions. Lot of work, though, especially if you want to ensure
that the picture is as neutral as possible.

An international organisation congratulating itself publicly for
"bringing OSM to the people of <country>" might, for example, paint a
different picture than the people of <country> themselves...

> This would be a way to avoid international organizations arriving in one
> country and developing OSM activities without contacting the local
> community (a problem we don't have that much for now but might have much
> more in the future with the growing notoriety...)

Agreed, but this is a danger even without international organisations.
You can easily have, say, a group at the university in the capital
forging ahead with "we are OSM <country>" and being very out of touch
with the non-academic hinterland. Groups could want to attain the "we
are OSM <country>" label because it opens new funding sources for them
and not because they're genuinely interested in OSM. And even if they
are, they could either make honest attempts to include everybody, or
look disdainfully down on that other group of another class or caste in
the country and try everything to keep them out of OSM. It is extremely
difficult to get a neutral picture of such social dynamics from
thousands of miles away. We should always assume good intentions but we
must not be naive either. Especially seeing that participatory culture
is not the same in all countries - many seem to have relatively rigid
ideas about leadership and hierarchies, where the first thing a new
group does is print business cards for its president ;)

Perhaps this danger could be mitigated by making it very clear that
proto-chapters do not enjoy any territorial hegemony, and encourage them
not to call themselves "OSM <country>" but something else instead,
something that leaves room for other players...

I think that we should also put more focus on local chapters (and
not-yet-chapters) sending us yearly reports (as they are already
required to by the local chapter agreement). That would perhaps let us
see when a chapter is basically just "me and my friends I go to lunch
with" and when they're genuinely trying to represent OSM across the region.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"