[Talk-GB] English chapter

[Jonathan Bennett]

David Earl wrote:
> I put a proposal on the wiki page
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/Local_Chapters/Proposed_Chapters
> for a central England OSM local chapter.
> 
> Peter disagrees with the (too small) scale of this and wants to discuss 
> it here.
> 
> I have no huge feelings about this. I just felt that we have a high 
> density of mappers in the UK so it deserved more local representation. I 
> can't say I'm that interested in running a national scale organisation, 
> whereas something more regionally focussed is up my street.

David,

As I understand it, the local chapters are a way of overcoming national
boundaries and the relative difficulty of moving money internationally.
It's an attempt to have an organisation in each country analogous to the
OSMF that mappers in that country can join. I'm not aware of any plans
to have each local chapter set up their own data standards, or being "in
charge" of the mapping for its area.

I understand your point about the urban south-east dominating the
project in the UK at present: As someone who abandoned the Midlands for
the South East a long time ago, I see the difference between where I
live now being mapped down to the level of each post box, versus where I
grew up having primary and secondary routes mapped and little else. This
will be solved by recruiting mappers in the blank areas (or persuading
the southerners to visit for a weekend), not by setting up a separate,
parallel organisation to the OSMF.

Setting up local mailing lists, keeping Wiki pages up to date and
holding events can all be done for free. Setting up a legal entity would
cost real money without bringing any benefits, as far as I can see.

I don't therefore support setting up any local chapters within the UK,
but I hope you see why.

-- 
Jonathan (Jonobennett)