Board meeting 2018-10-10

Meeting took place at 19:30

Chair: Rob
Present: Rob, Gregory, Jez, Adam, Brian

 

Previous minutes have been approved. Discussion of August minutes, that have retrospectively been written from spreadsheet, all happy now.

Waylens circular resolution approved. Nobody has requested it yet. Not sure what is putting people off. Directors could hire it and give feedback on using it. If the rental fee is limiting uptake, we could switch to member-to-member postage so that costs (and thus fee) are reduced. For now continue as is.

Board actions

Stepping through unfinished board actions, and discussion of what’s needed to review them. 2018 we’re happy with the general direction. Not sure we’re mature enough org to have such a firm strategy and drive, lots of stuff for us to do regardless. Next year it would be better to have something high-level and less detailed.

Academic projects being worked on a more international level, with the advisory board.

Transport API are a new corporate member. He will provide some text now they’ve paid. Rob to also update website with list of corporate members.

Contacting local orgs for the Quarterly Project (2018 Q3) didn’t happen. Tricky to do for this QP, but could contact businesses on the “ghosts list” e.g. Lloyds TSB, to ask them for a list of addresses of their branches.

Street Complete app, Adam making new tasks but QP was ending. Not sure it works or is needed for current QP, so will pause until another suitable QP.

Event for October in Bristol hasn’t been organised. Will need to pin this to one person to avoid it being missed, then try for November. Jez to take lead on and contact the ODI Node. ODI Summit in London is November 20th, so avoid that date but fine to organise near to it.

Corporation tax has been sent to Moose, should be considered completed but Brian will chase for confirmation.

Northampton University now paid the bill. Should do some publicity on this mapping, at least on our website. The university not interested in doing anything. Jez will aid Brian on this.

Defibrillator mapping. BHF replied to say thank you, but non-committal response to using our data.

 

Finished actions, back to agenda…

 

Enquiries/contact

Continued group contact with ODI (fair bit of chat regarding the Geospatial Commissions call for evidence and our response). ODI writing a report on Geospatial Open Data in the UK. Will be good to support promotion of the report once the ODI publish it, and state that we are welcome to companies talking to us and working with us, we are prepared to help them understand problems and engage with the UK community and wider OSM.

Brian gave a course to the BBC West Midlands – Data Journalists Course, 6 journos with regional press. Organiser has said they will be regional press contacts for us, waiting for details. Brian will also go to Birmingham City University to a journo course.

Adam had meeting with St Albans Unlocked, to be covered later.

Financial update

Balance at Bank £1524.40 Paypal Balance £87.97 Total Cash £1612.37 Creditors total £1105.30 (UoN) Debtors Total £130 (BJP UoN travel expense estimate £30 Corporation Tax £40 Accountants estimate £60) Total Assets £2587.67

Updates to be made regarding Northampton University with money in. Some corporation tax to be paid and domain to be renewed. Rob had to buy an SD card for the new camera, board approve for Rob to be reimbursed.

Membership

76 members (1 new). 15 have renewed, a lot still needing to renew by 3rd November. About 30 expire on November 3rd and aren’t set to auto renew, ~10 are set to auto renew. Gregory pointed this out, and the newsletter should have a tone of thanks to our members we’re able to respond to the Geospatial Commission etc. Board decided should watch the membership numbers and report any dropout number next board meeting.

Quarterly project (Q3) had 300 editors. Could we contact ones that we know aren’t OSM UK members and tell them the benefits of membership. Gregory to sort list and filter known members, Brian to write a message we could send out, directors to send some out manually.

Discussion of measuring success and possibility of Jez using Ohsome. OSMAnd have reports of activity, e.g. England, September, there were 5,798 changes by 1,439 contributors.

Talent Directory still has only 14 people. Needs more promotion.

Further agenda items

Updating OSM Wiki, Jez has been doing some and tidying. Making inroads rapidly. Most of the content is old. Flagging up pages to update will more likely give people something to do and generate action. Might need to give a date to update pages before they are deleted, on a page-by-page basis.

Notes App is making some progress (Adam) now working on how the maps are displayed.

ODI Invitation to tender. Sent to members.

Geospatial Commission, Rob’s written a response with lots of comments and sent to ODI for feedback. Directors making comments on it. Needs a cover sheet. Gregory is happy to be the named contact for our response. Call had some discussion on aspects to be included, such as addresses being opened (National Street Gazetteer) and scans of historic documents having copyright. Rob captured these points.

Historic Boundaries discussion from Talk-GB. No conclusive way to make decision on such matters, other than suggestion of OSM UK CIC or Loomio votes.

Press releases – Adam has a friend that does 1 hour free Skype advice consultations. Jez is interested, others could join. Todo: decide time.

Report from event, St Albans Unlocked. Brian had good reports of Adam being there.

They’re starting a local community group around OSM. Lots of work with visual impairment software. Action: Adam to write about the experience of the day, for the OSM UK newsletter. Adam thanks Brian for the help with what to say, and he made some slides from that which people might find useful. How to use the tools, maybe use of JOSM would be good. People are also interested in mobile tools, are there guides or tutorials for how to use those. Might just need work to collate existing guides and videos. This could also include guides on notes (how to make good ones).

Jez had to leave the meeting.

Data4Good in Birmingham (14th Nov). Brian is talking about what is necessary for having a stand, we should commit to at least one person going.

Gregory will be speaking at ODI Summit, November 20th. Board recognise this is a great gig and task Gregory with getting new members.

 

Meeting ended + 87 minutes. Next meeting: 14th November.