[Talk-GB] OSMUK local chapter

[Dennis Bauszus]

On 29/06/2016 19:57, Rob Nickerson wrote:
> So here is my 100 day plan (the first general meeting is a given so not
> included here):
>
> 1. Create a portal for discussion and decision making.
>
> I hate to tell you but talk-gb sucks. In fact mailing lists in general
> suck. They work well for techy people but don't appeal to Aunty Jane. If
> we want to expand our community beyond our current group we need to
> appeal to a less techy audience. Several months ago I looked at all
> sorts of platforms many of which are great for discussions and sharing
> info (e.g. slack, fleep, gitter, facebook) but very few are good for
> group decision making. If we want this project to be a group one (and we
> should) rather than a director project then a decision making tool will
> help.
>
> I recommend Loomio and it is therefore my first 100 day task. We can
> host on their site (like the OSMF do) or self host.
>
> Any volunteers for self hosting? See:
> https://github.com/loomio/loomio-deploy
>
> I will set a group up in a few days unless somebody offers to deploy to
> their server.
>
>
> 2. Run a competition for ideas (with money to pay for their implementation)
>
> Once a discussion and decision making tool has been set up lets share
> ideas. Give a certain amount of time and then pick a winner! The
> following are essentially my suggestions to such a competition.
>
>
> 3. Website
> We need to start thinking about our website. Whatever we develop has to
> cover off our objectives. A big front page map (like openstreetmap.org
> <http://openstreetmap.org>) will not in my opinion do that. I prefer a
> website such as http://switch2osm.org , http://openstreetmap.de/ , or
> http://mappa-mercia.org
>
> Do others agree?
>
>
> 4. Promote the quarterly projects
> We've seen that these can be successful but we need a crack team of
> people to help promote these. Let's set up such a team.
>
>
> 5. Regional champions
> We need to spread the work. If we could have a Chairperson committed to
> OSM UK as their day job then great. If not, then let's split the work
> and build a community of regional champions.
>
>
> 6. Get a newsletter going
> We've set one of these up for State of the Map (via mailchimp) and now
> have over 500 people subscribed. Communication requires ongoing work but
> I'd put it in the list of top few tasks.
>
>
> 7. Buy some equipment and loan it out.
> OSM previously loaned out GPS devices. We could do the same but expand
> it to GoPro cameras (for mapillary style mapping), laser distance
> measuring devices (useful for building heights), etc..
>
>
> Regards,
> *Rob*
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Talk-GB mailing list
> Talk-GB at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
>


I agree with Rob. Maillists are terrible. For all the good which OSGB 
does, outreach is certainly not a mailchimp strength.

I still believe that a community blog is the way forward at this stage. 
There are poll and mail widgets on blogger or wordpress. I personally 
prefer blogger as it is already hosted but we can also host a free 
wordpress blog on OpenShift. We can also host a wiki but do we have 
enough content to justify a wiki. This is probably something for further 
down the line. Static websites are good for companies but not really for 
a community organisation.

There are poll and mail list widgets on blogger. Other javascript 
widgets are also available.

I actually just created a poll for the most suitable web platform for OSMUK.

- Community Blog (blogger)
- Static Webpage
- Wiki
- Loomio
- Slack (i don't really get it)
- Maillist (talk-gb)

Have a look and vote on

https://osmuk.blogspot.co.uk/

Please drop me a mail if you want to be a moderator and post stuff. It 
would be nice if people give it a try and post some information. Rob, 
can you post your roadmap please?

Being tied up with work myself right now but plan to do a post about the 
OSM projects my company is currently doing.

I can also sort out a maillist widget for OSMUK next week.

Best,
Dennis