I’ve been doing some research as part of the Foundation’s goal to establish a framework for local OSM chapters to be Federated to the Foundation. The idea is that a local or special interest group will be able to set up a formal relationship with the OSM Foundation, allowing them to hold local mapping parties, events, conferences and so on under the broader banner of the Foundation. Federated groups or chapters will also be able to represent themselves to other official bodies – Governments and media organisations being two examples.
Quite a bit of work has already been done on this by the OSM-F Board, lead by 80n, so I’m not starting from cold. Most of the research I’ve been doing today has been into the Mozilla Foundation, who have been recommended as a good template for a central Foundation with federated members. The next step is for me to contact some local OSM leaders and present the OSM Foundation’s current proposal to them to get some feedback – I’ll be doing this over the next 7 days.
More info on the OSM Wiki. As always, if you have questions or would like to be involved with the work of the OSM-F, get in touch