Cooperation / Consolidation
Hamish
As you may know we now have (at least) three similar if not parallel
NZ GIS communities to choose from. As each is relatively small perhaps
some cooperation or consolidation is in order. Even if separate groups
are to be maintained due to differing focus, I would hope that each
would link to the others they felt relevant.
Besides this list we have the Aust-NZ chapter of the OSGeo Foundation
which is quite active and making preparations for the 700-1000
delegate FOSS4GIS 2009 conference in Sydney, and another unrelated
Google Group called "nzopengis" which seems to have 50 or so members
and who seem involved in interesting things like helping to get LINZ
road data into the OpenStreetMap.org project.
http://www.osgeo.org
thoughts?
Hamish
ps - shameless plug: abstracts for SIRC2008 (AKL 1-3 Sept) are due in
by 23 June
http://www.business.otago.ac.nz/infosci/SIRC/SIRC2008/
It is being held in parallel with GeoCart'2008
Gavin Treadgold
Agree. It is this currently dispersed approach to the GIS community in
NZ that has prompted us to retask gis.org.nz and aim to provide a
central focal point for the GIS community in New Zealand. Our aim is
not to replace or absorb other groups, rather be a central point that
can point out where the rest of the NZ GIS community is.
I expect some consolidation to occur though. One example is the NZ
ESRI User list which has seen a few offtopic posts recently, and I
believe they are keen to move some of the offtopic discussions
elsewhere.
One of our first little projects will be to map out the NZ GIS
community, and we'll probably start capturing the details in the
gis.org.nz wiki, providing overviews of each, as well as the key
links. I envisage that every group, and every organisation
(commercial, non-profit, governmental) will eventually have a page in
the wiki.
We'd welcome anyone to help us identify the others involved, and
further discussion on how you see it working.
Cheers Gav
John Clegg
One thing to remember is we want to provide a way to aggregate
interesting topics and discussion across different technologies eg.
open source and vendor technologies.
We hope to provide an aggregation service that can cater to all
groups, and thus provide a useful place for the whole community.
John