Community consultation: OO Org QGIS Special Interest Group Charter

[Andrew Jeffrey]

Hi All,

The OSGeo Oceania board has approved an initiative for members to form Special Interest Groups (SIGs) within the OO community.

A SIG is a way for community members to collaborate around common interests which in this case is QGIS.

In establishing a SIG, the OO board requires that the group proposing the SIG put forward a charter which outlines the Aim and Scope under which the SIG will operate.

Myself, Emma Hain, John Bryant, Nathan Woodrow and Nyall Dawson would like to start a QGIS SIG which can be used to benefit QGIS users in our community. To get things started we have come up with a charter that we would like to make available for community consultation. As this charter currently reflects our input we would like to put this out for discussion to see if what we are proposing is on the right path for the community. At the moment everyone with the link below has "comment" permissions, but "edit" permissions can be granted on request if you would like to get more involved and you're welcome to do so.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lrewntrC0N1r6mfZdo1AdPhe2qTEaN5hDA2pcL0mrvI/edit?usp=sharing

I also just want to be upfront that this SIG is proposing that there be a membership fee associated with the group. The funds raised by the membership will be stored with the OO org and then used by the SIG on items as scoped out in the charter. The idea with the membership is not to "make money" but to pool our small contributions to give us better "buying power" for lack of a better term. As a SIG within the OO org we can participate in crowdfunding campaigns, engage a dev to develop a feature important to us but might not be recognised as important to the larger QGIS project, or engage a trainer to provide professional development via Zoom, the types of things that are hard to do as individuals or as a user group with no funds etc. The membership arrangement also allows us to offer membership to organisations which will become a way for them to support QGIS and their local QGIS community. Ideally, this is where a majority of the funds would come from as we don't want an individual to be excluded due to a "fee", which is also covered in the charter. I'm available as I'm sure the other proposers are to discuss the intention of this further and in the open on this list.

Any questions feel free to ask or if you prefer to comment on the charter that is fine too. 

I look forward to discussing this with you.

Thanks

Andrew

[Adam Steer]

Hey Andrew and all the QGIS SIG proposers

Thanks, I think this is a perfect use of OSGeo Oceania as a backing
organisation :)

My only reservation with any SIG proposal is that effort isn't
duplicated about events and marketing, and also that a funding from a
small pool of interested parties (relative to other parts of the
world) is able to be effectively spread among the whole community. For
an example it would be a bit awry to see a SIG gather a heap of
funding at the expense of conference sponsorships. I guess in that
case the SIG could also sponsor conferences? This goes the other way
too - the existence of a well connected SIG makes it easier for OO to
fund a QGIS feature (for example) if it decides to do so.

I think clear, constant and open communication between OO and the SIG
will make those concerns go away.

In writing this I did work my thoughts through to a serious question:
How will the SIG deal with conflicts of interest? A stated aim of the
SIG is to fund development, what will the SIG do if all the key QGIS
developers in the region are also in the group of people making
decisions about buying developer time?

My only comment on the charter itself is that if you want, you can
link to the existing Berlin Code of Conduct:
https://berlincodeofconduct.org/ - with which the upcoming OO CoC
should be 100% compatible.

Cheers,

Adam

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[Andrew Jeffrey]

Hi Adam,

Thanks for the feedback.

I agree the SIG shouldn't bring about any duplication of the processes that the OO currently does. A SIG as defined in the guidelines should be "enabling OSGeo Oceania members to interact, share knowledge, organise events, and collaborate on a selected, targeted topic within the scope of OSGeo Oceania". So a SIG should be complementary to the OO function and allow the interested community members to drive engagement in that area without the OO board having to do it all. Like you say though, open communication between the SIG and the OO board is key in making sure there is no overlap being introduced. Also to be clear the SIG isn’t seeking “sponsorship” as such but we do want to be able to collect a membership fee for people/orgs wanting to be involved, allowing them to fund items that maybe other OO members don’t see as important. I don’t see this taking away from conference sponsorship and this idea will ultimately sink or swim depending on whether the SIG members have an appetite to fund the items in our scope.

As for the conflict of interest, to be honest I don't know the answer in regards to how that should be dealt with. I think we need to add something in the charter, would removing those people from the proposal and voting process be enough? How does OO deal with this? I don’t want to rule local devs out of working on this because they belong to the group, but we also don’t want to become the entry point to company XYZ.

Thanks for the feedback.

Andrew

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[John Bryant]

Andrew, thanks a lot for continuing to push this forward. It has been a couple of months since I last looked at this, and I haven't really had a detailed look at the SIG concept yet.

I'm 'out of the office' for the next few days, but would be happy to join in this discussion when I get back, and have a proper chance to refresh my memory and get up to speed on SIGs.

One brief thought, it feels like it would be good to consider a free (or very inexpensive) tier of membership. I suspect many of us can't justify (or can't afford) to spend much, but could contribute in other ways.

Cheers

John

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[Emma Hain]

Hey all

So I am back in OSGeo land as I have finished up a mad month on my other volunteer project. Bad that they coincide with each other...

I will get my head around above and come back to you on it. 

Thanks for your work on this.

Cheers

Em

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[ia...@jcis.net.au]

It took me a while to get my head around this but I have made some suggestions to the SIG Charter.

Could we have SIG's within the group - e.g archaeologists using QGIS in Oceania?? 

Cheers Iain

[Andrew Jeffrey]

Hi,

No problems, with everything going on post conference, elections, and the upcoming holiday period we may need to leave this open for comment for a little longer than normal. Happy to go with what people feel is needed here.

John, regarding your thoughts on the membership I agree 100%, the charter at the moment has a sentence stating the SIG should be "providing membership avenues for people that may not be in a financial position to pay a fee" perhaps we need more clarity around membership and what it involves in the charter? To be clear, my thoughts are that keeping in the spirit of OO the SIG should be available to everyone and no one should be excluded from participating, on reflection the term "membership" might come across as prohibitive. I'm sure we'll come up with something acceptable through conversation here.

For context though it may be helpful to explain the intent behind the idea of a "membership". The issues it aims to address are below:

1. There is some difficulty associated with organisations giving a "donation", but purchasing something like a "membership" to a professional user group seems to be acceptable and is easier justified in some procurement processes.
2. For individuals donating to QGIS helps the project but has little influence on their QGIS experience, also individuals on the QGIS list have indicated trouble participating in crowdfunding campaigns due to high minimum pledges.

A QGIS SIG would allow us to receive money from interested parties wanting to support QGIS in our region, pool the funds and then spend as the SIG sees fit. The best part is the money will be spent on the items scoped in our charter which is again relevant to users in our region. For lack of a better term think of it as a "co-op" for the donations alot of us already make on an ad-hoc basis. Ideally we would be looking to get a majority of the membership from organisations that we know use QGIS to support a bulk of this activity, and then people willing to make a personal contribution would then add to that. Then if people can't make a personal contribution that is also fine because they can assist in other ways.

That was the idea in justifying a membership fee. We will need to offer something in return, for individuals that will be the professional network and for organisations that will be recognition at this early stage but as we progress this may evolve.

Thanks 

Andrew

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[Adam Steer]

Hi all

Thanks Andrew for addressing all the questions people have. Responding
to your reply to my questions:

- OK about sponsorships and so on, I can see that the QGIS SIG could
choose to align events with FOSS4G SotM Oceania editions, thereby
really streamlining logistics and effort and working with the whole
community

- conflict of interest: really hard in a community where everyone
knows each other - my science community is the same, anonymous reviews
are almost impossible! I think yes, recusing people from decision
making is a great step. I also think it's unrealistic to make a
blanket statement that fits all cases. I think the best approach might
be to handle each case as it comes, and do it transparently. To make a
concrete suggestion - and feel free to disagree - the charter could
contain a statement like 'Conflicts of interest, real or perceived,
will be handled in accordance with our code of conduct. This means
recusing relevant parties from decision making as early as possible in
the process, and discussing the matter openly with our community. In
some cases, we may have to proceed by funding people who make
decisions about where to apply funds. This is a function of a small
and close knit community, and will always be discussed openly with the
community first.'

There are probably heaps of loopholes in that, and impossible to close
them all - so the short version is to write exactly what you wrote in
reply: 'we will be ethical, and will resist being a funding pipeline
to particular people or companies'. The community has to step up to
make that always true.

I have no thoughts to add to John's about SIG membership, except I
really like that you're thinking about how to manage it in an
inclusive fashion.

I do have an opinion about creating sub-SIGS though - in my science
career I've seen multiple disciplines discover the same tooling a few
times. So my hot take is 'avoid having discipline-specific subgroups',
way better to let disciplinary cross-fertilisation happen ;)

Cheers,

Adam

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[Cameron Shorter]

The question of membership fees pops up every few years with arguments for and against.

I summarized a bunch of threads in the OSGeo community back when I was on the OSGeo board in: http://cameronshorter.blogspot.com/2013/03/osgeo-board-priorities.html .There may be some points in there which you can reuse.

OSGeo as a low capital, volunteer focused organisation

Should OSGeo act as a high capital or low capital organisation? I.e., should OSGeo dedicate energy to collecting sponsorship and then passing out these funds to worthy OSGeo causes.
While initially it seems attractive to have OSGeo woo sponsors, because we would all love to have more money to throw at worthy OSGeo goals, the reality is that chasing money is hard work. And someone who can chase OSGeo sponsorship is likely conflicted with chasing sponsorship for their particular workplace. So in practice, to be effective in chasing sponsorship, OSGeo will probably need to hire someone specifically for the role. OSGeo would then need to raise at least enough to cover wages, and then quite a bit more if the sponsorship path is to create extra value.
This high capital path is how the Eclipse foundation is set up, and how LocationTech propose to organise themselves. It is the path that OSGeo started following when founded under the umbrella of Autodesk.
However, over the last seven years, OSGeo has slowly evolved toward a low capital volunteer focused organisation. Our overheads are very low, which means we waste very little of our volunteer labour and capital on the time consuming task of chasing and managing money. Consequently, any money we do receive (from conference windfalls or sponsorship) goes a long way - as it doesn't get eaten up by high overheads. As discussed and agreed by the board, this low capital path is something that is working very well for us, and is the path we should continue to follow.

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Cameron Shorter

Technical Writer, Google

[Alex Leith]

Hey Cameron

The issue of membership fees is only for the QGIS special interest group. The OSGeo Oceania membership will always be zero, or near zero cost.

I'll let the QGIS folks speak for themselves, but they're talking about being able to pool money to fund specific activities, and if people are willing to pay for a subscription to regularly contribute, and they call it a membership of that QGIS SIG, that's all good, I say!

Cheers,

Alex

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[Nathan Woodrow]

Hey,

Yeah, Alex is right here.  This is a membership cost at the QGIS SIG level, modeled a bit on how the QGIS Swiss user group, etc works.  They have run with a model like this for a while now and it functions quite well.   A lot of really solid work is funded, fully or partially, by them a lot of the time and we owe a lot to them for that. We would like to build up that same kind of buying power here in Oz for our local users.

Regards,

Nathan

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[Andrew Jeffrey]

Hi Iain,

Thanks for taking the time to take a look at the charter.

As for groups within the Special Interest Group (SIG), I would hope that all disciplines would feel welcome to participate e.g  Archaeologists, Environmental Professional, Local Government, etc because we all have a base level of QGIS usage and community involvement in common. As for a group of archaeologists (or any professional sector within the group) wanting to collaborate on the areas defined in the scope of the charter and use the SIG to drive engagement in their area, then I would say that's a great outcome. 

For example, if you wanted to organise a local meetup and need assistance for a venue fee or catering etc and this SIG has money in the bank to help, then I could see your group of motivated users being able to raise a motion to access some of that funding to help achieve your goal. The idea is to give our QGIS community the resources needed to help us drive our own engagement opportunities where possible. 

Thanks

Andrew

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[Emma Hain]

Hey All

I’m with the essence of what Martin put forward as well as Nathan. If those that can do pool together funds under the SIG then we can get the tools that Oceania needs. 

Is there a link to the Swiss Qgis funding model?

Cheers

Emma Hain

On 30 Nov 2020, at 13:51, Martin Tomko <tom...@unimelb.edu.au> wrote:



Dear all,

I just chip in, to elaborate on what I was thinking about when drafting the SIG guidelines.

 

The overall model, for me, was that of the ACM SIGs, which work well ( some), or less well ( others), but do not impact on each other. An OO member can be member of multiple SIGs, or none. Some may organise hackatons, mapping parties, microconferences, some may not. Some may even propose ( and successfully populate and run) a stream at a FOSS4G SOTM conference (that would be awesome). They may help set the program for the conference, etc, etc.

 

The level of activity, and the financial resources they may have available will differ, and it is not up to the OO (board) to dictate, as long as they do not encroach on the freedom of others to have their own activities, do not place undue burden on the OO itself (run by volunteers, you do not want to process hundreds of micro payments, etc, I would say), or have multiple SIGs overlapping in scope.

 

Re fees. I would have assumed that most will be free, BUT the ability to levy a membership[ fee was left there exactly to satisfy the need for supporting a more intensive activity that is not “event” based. So, if the QGIS SIG decides to print a monthly SIG magazine and provide it as a membership service to the SIG, sure, why not, levy a membership fee. Or a website, online course, or similar.

 

Broader membership by organisations is starting to go borderline, to what Adam noted. Is this something where the overall interests of the organisation clash with the SIG? I would suggest let’s try this, and decide, as we go. If the burden by SIGS or the internal competition is too much ( we lose FOS4G SOTM sponsors to the SIG), then this will need to be addressed. This is I believe the main concern, but we are not there.

 

Martin

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[Phil Wyatt]

https://www.qgis.ch/en/association/membership-application

Cheers - Phil, 

On the road with his iPad 

On 30 Nov 2020, at 5:30 pm, Emma Hain <emma...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hey All

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[Emma Hain]

Thanks!

Emma Hain

On 30 Nov 2020, at 17:03, Phil Wyatt <ph...@wyatt-family.com> wrote:

https://www.qgis.ch/en/association/membership-application

[Andrew Jeffrey]

Hi All,

Thanks for the discussion and input so far.

I see there are some comments on the charter itself as well which is great, we'll try and address each of those in the document and I believe you can see the history/resoltion of these in the "comment history" in the doc itself. What I can see from the initial feedback is that the "membership" or definition of needs more detail and we need to address the potential for "conflicts of interest" when raising and voting on motions.

@adam - if you don't mind I will add your example text for dealing with conflicts of interest from the previous email verbatim as a starting point and evolve it from there.

Also, remember if you want to have some editing input on the charter reach out and I can add you as an editor to the document.

Thanks

Andrew

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[Andrew Jeffrey]

Hi All,

Thanks for the discussion on the QGIS SIG proposed charter so far. 

I have worked in the comments on dealing with a conflict of interest, voting (minimum number of voters), and membership tiers. Also a few formatting changes e.g. I moved the membership section higher up in the document.

I suspect the membership tiers may need some further discussion, these were the tiers loosely discussed by our SIG proposers very early on (not the price but the distinction - prices are placeholders at the moment), we could also look at the pricing of the Swiss User group for guidance. However, again this is all open for your input and feedback.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lrewntrC0N1r6mfZdo1AdPhe2qTEaN5hDA2pcL0mrvI/edit?usp=sharing

Thanks

Andrew

[John Bryant]

Hi Andrew, awesome work! I've added a few small comments in the doc and want to bring up a couple of thoughts. Apologies if I'm raising questions that have already been answered.

Geographic scope of the SIG. In the doc it's called the Oceania QGIS SIG. I know we've talked about inclusivity, and welcoming participation from the whole region, in keeping with the ethos of FOSS4G SotM Oceania and OSGeo Oceania. But I'm noticing that so far, (I think) the discussion has only drawn comments and contributions from people in Australia. I guess this is partly because the QGIS Australia community is pretty well established, with a recognised QGIS user group and a mailing list dating back nearly 10 years. But I'm wondering if we need to do more work to make sure people in other countries welcome this representation. Does the lack of participation to date reflect that the message isn't getting through, or that only Australians are interested in this SIG? Or is it just that the Australia QGIS community is leading the conversation because it's more established, and maybe the rest of the region is watching & listening with interest, and will join in later?

Which list? There are a couple of references to "the open mailing list", it might be good for us to clarify which list. The existing QGIS Australia User Group mailing list, or the Oceania list, or another? I think it could be helpful to make this unambiguous so that people know where to post, and which list to follow to stay up to date. This might be part of a larger question of whether this SIG is distinct from the QGIS Australia User Group, or is the same group in a new form.

Thanks!

John

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[Andrew Jeffrey]

Hi John,

Thanks for the comments, I'll check them out. As for the questions you raise, they haven't been discussed yet and happy to discuss them here.

Geographic Scope of the Special Interest Group (SIG) -  As per the OSGeo Oceania SIG guidelines, it would be available to all OSGeo Oceania org (OO org) members so that would be the geographic area that OO org represents. Emma was also very passionate from the start that this is available to all Oceania and not just Australia. However, I do take on board your observation about the comments / feedback / input being very much Australian focused, in fact, I would go one step further and say that it has primarily been from the regular posters of the OO mailing list. Would yourself or Emma have suggestions on how we could broaden the reach and improve the community input? Are there other channels that this should be made available on?

Which List - My intention was that "the open mailing list" will be the OO mailing list, so I do apologise for the ambiguity here and I can clear that up in the charter. As this is a Special Interest Group within the OO org, I believe that would be the best place for it. But that is only my opinion, happy for others to share their point of view and reach an outcome that we are all happy with.

I have been cross-posting the charter and progress on the QGIS Australia User Group mailing list for those who may be interested (I now recognise that this may have caused more confusion than necessary). A number of members in the QGIS Australia User group (myself included) wanted to form something like this SIG after the successful 2017 user meetup in Sydney, it ultimately failed because we didn't have the capacity to handle funds, and something much better came along in the local FOSS4G conference and the OO org because it addresses this challenge for all FOSS4G projects in the region. The development of this SIG will build on the QGIS community interest that we demonstrated exists in 2017, this time around we have the structure of the OO org to help us progress funding initiatives to drive investment in the community.

Hope that helps, 

Thanks

Andrew

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[John Bryant]

Thanks Andrew, I'm definitely on board with being inclusive and I think Oceania-wide is great. My concern is about the SIG being seen as the "go-to" representative of the whole region's QGIS community, before this reach is genuinely established, and inadvertently standing in the way of local leadership & initiatives. This is why I wonder whether we see this as an expansion of the QGIS Australia User Group, or if they're kept as distinct groups. I'd personally lean toward making the geographic scope large, and the operational scope small (to begin with).

Related, the OSMF made OSGeo Oceania's OpenStreetMap local chapter status conditional on making it clear that country-based groups were entitled to form their own local chapters (see wiki entry).

Anyway, I don't think this concern is a blocker, more a note of caution. Hopefully Pacific and NZ people are interested and will join in, the SIG could encourage this by being proactive about supporting users there. Looking forward to helping!

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[Andrew Jeffrey]

Hi John,

Thanks for the comments.

I see what you mean about appearing to be the "go-to" group without engagement from the whole community. 

The SIG does not necessarily have to be the QGIS user group for the whole Oceania region, it is expressed that way in the charter but if it doesn't work then it doesn't need to stay that way. The QGIS user groups have a model where the user group can be regional or national - https://www.qgis.org/en/site/forusers/usergroups.html - The UK, for example, has three representing different parts of the UK. There is no reason why Oceania couldn't have multiple independent QGIS user groups like Oceania (Australia), Oceania (Aotearoa), Oceania (Fiji) etc. I do, however, see all of these user groups within Oceania having the same problem that the Australian QGIS group experienced regarding the running of our own events, as described before the OO org and SIG concept provide a framework to address that.

So, I don't see the SIG standing in the way of local initiatives, but we do have responsibility to engage with the Oceania community and let them know that this SIG and its resources are not exclusive to the Australian QGIS users.

Also, I was going to message you this and ask for advice but it's probably best out in the open for other people to throw around suggestions. I have struggled with how to best interact with parts/regions of the OO community. I've included the Australian QGIS list along the way because it is the only user group in Oceania registered on the QGIS site and the OO mailing list because we want to form a SIG within that community. However, if there are other user groups out there and people know of them i'd appreciate it if you could put me in touch.

My preference at the moment with the engagement we have is to push on as defined in the charter. The charter is able to be altered in the future, so if something just doesn't work or turns out to inadvertently be prohibitive then we have the opportunity to correct it. I know the people involved at the moment have the communities best interest in mind (and I understand no one is suggesting otherwise), and I am confident that the OO board will hold us to account. I think if we can address these engagement issues as we go, this could be a good example for other SIGs starting out.

Thanks

Andrew

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[Emma Hain]

Hey all can we set up a meeting?

Do we want to do it after Xmas and before new year or in new year - i am back on deck on 10th Jan

[Andrew Jeffrey]

Hi Emma,

Good idea, probably best to tackle this on the new year now. Would you like to set an agenda and appointment for the week starting 11th January 2021?

Thanks

Andrew

[Emma Hain]

Hi All

For our first meeting, I propose the week starting 10th January. Can you please fill in your preference for meeting times in this doodle poll. 

https://doodle.com/poll/e4iv56ra4u657eug?utm_source=poll&utm_medium=link

Also, please send me any items for an agenda. 

Once I have a draft I will send through the link. 

Thanks

Em

[Emma Hain]

Hi All

I have added the following to the QGIS SIG Charter. 

• Composition and Roles
• Secretary
• Role of OO Board Director
• Financial
• Reporting
• Referenced documents

Can you please review and add comments on your return from holidays (or before if you want to escape your relatives).

Also for the Agenda, I think we should concentrate on finalising the QGIS SIG Charter and go through that. So please review it (again) and put in notes etc. Once that is complete, we can move to an agenda for normal business. 

Additionally, if you have any events, including live you tube presentations or get-togethers that fit within OO, please place them on the OO Calendar - you can find the links here. Out meetings will be added to the calendar. 

Merry Christmas!

Em

[Emma Hain]

Hi All

I have set up a Jitsi  (link) meeting for 1100 on Monday 11^th January.

It sits on the OSGeo Oceania Events Calendar (QGIS SIG Meetup) so head there to add whether you will be attending and to get all the links. 

We will be working on finalising the QGIS SIG document and I have yet to get into the agenda folder and will be offline for the next week (offfgrid beach camping enjoying the storms and rain.....).

If I get on earlier, I will send one out. 

Thanks

Em

[Emma Hain]

HI All

A couple of things:

1) I have updated the Jitsi link as it was showing to be happening on 25 Jan instead of 11 Jan. New link: https://meet.jit.si/SkilledGrandparentsKeepThoroughly

2) Link to Agenda - I doubt we will get past the QGIS SIG Charter but there are some other items for food for thought: 20200111 QGIS SIG Agenda

Cheers

Em