[Talk-ca] OSM Canada & State of the Map US: Oct 20-22

[Matthew Darwin]

Hi Brian,

In my view we definitely need OSMCanada to go beyond the big cities.  
It is not "Canada" if we don't.

In my view the main things that a collection of people cannot do on 
their own are:

1) Have a bank account.  There are groups that would give and 
organization money to do things around OSM. You can't just give money 
to an individual.   Also might need to look into charitable status 
later on so people could give donations and get a tax receipt (more 
paperwor overhead for that)

2) Look into getting money from the feds.  There have been 
announcements about Feds making money available for Smart Cities and 
related activities, for sure money cannot go to individuals. I am 
waiting to see the details on what they are going to fund.

Monies received could go towards meetups/hosting costs (which people 
pay out of their own pocket now) as well as "hiring" people to work on 
specific projects which normally they would not spend time on.... or 
maybe travel costs to go do a survey in an area which needs help, but 
has no expert mappers. or more training activities for folks. I could 
also see an educational component whereas it would be great to have 
people go into highschool civic classes and do a session on OSM.

3) The Building Canada 2020 project needs some leadership to make 
things happen.  Having an organization helping to drive that would 
make that easier.

4) There are things that some folks across the country have done to 
improve their area of the map... would be good to share practices more 
broadly, in a Canadian context.

Of course all of these can be done in a private organization (eg like 
Mapbox), but I feel that building an organization to represent the 
broader community would be more beneficial in the long run.

My 2c.

On 2017-09-28 08:19 AM, Brian Bancroft wrote:
> Hi Matthew,
>
> It seems like an interesting idea. I've been travelling a bit 
> lately, and I've found there's a lot of people out there who don't 
> know about OSM where the platform is exactly what they need.
>
> Would a robust OSMCanada spread the Gospel beyond the cities? Would 
> it seek to incorporate local GIS imports on the map with legal 
> support and task management?
>
> Do we know what an incorporated OSMCanada would do that the informal 
> association of really nice and diligent people can't do on their own?
>
> I won't be making SoTMUS this year, but I'd love to hear more about 
> what your aims are with this venture, and the problems you and 
> others believe (or know) it would solve through incorporation and 
> (possibly?)  sweet government handouts. I'm guessing that these are 
> the questions you want to crunch out while you're at the gathering 
> of interesting people.
>
> Best wishes and good luck with this endeavour,
>
> Brian
>
>
>
>
> *From:* jwhelan0112 at gmail.com
> *Sent:* September 28, 2017 7:06 AM
> *To:* scruss at gmail.com
> *Cc:* talk-ca at openstreetmap.org
> *Subject:* Re: [Talk-ca] OSM Canada & State of the Map US: Oct 20-22
>
>
> I hadn't heard of them and I'm in Ottawa but there again I'm not 
> very sociable.  I question why such a decision would be made out of 
> the country?
>
> Does it matter if someone creates a not for profit Canadian 
> corporation? I think it would have to change its name though there 
> have been discussions recently about the use of OSM in names.
>
> Cheerio John
>
> On 27 September 2017 at 21:59, Stewart C. Russell <scruss at gmail.com 
> <mailto:scruss at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     On 2017-09-27 05:49 PM, Matthew Darwin wrote:
>     > Hi,
>     >
>     > Are any Canadian folks going to State of the Map US October 20-22
>     > https://2017.stateofthemap.us/
>
>     Nope. Wish I could afford it.
>
>     > During the conference, I would like to have a discussion about
>     turning
>     > the informal https://www.osmcanada.ca/ into a not-for-profit
>     Canadian
>     > corporation.
>
>     I'd be opposed. Who are osmcanada? They don't represent me. Last
>     I heard
>     it was an informal group of mappers in Ottawa. What would the
>     non-profit
>     do? How would it justify its status? Would it be attempting to be an
>     OSMF Chapter?
>
>      Stewart
>
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