2020/21 budget: should we consider raising membership fees?

Hi Nick,

You are quite right in most/all of your points....and sound like a future Director of OSMUK....

OSM in the UK should consider its purpose. With Ordnance Survey making Open Data releases, their data becomes more usable to casual users. Our purpose is not to 'be the Open Data replacement for Ordnance Survey'.

OSM data is extremely useful to a number of companies from large corporations to SMEs, but they have limited opportunity to express their gratitude in tangible ways because, well, we don't ask for anything. Amazon actively update the map at source, whereas others take without giving back. The UK Government largely ignores our existence whilst writing 2 * £30million cheques to the OS. OSMUK makes us more visible by having a body that they can talk to. We spoke to a researcher at the Geospatial Commission, as well as TfL, Bing/Microsoft, and Mapillary/Facebook. That's one of the benefits of your membership.

At the moment OSMUK acts a bit like a union, the benefits are a collective voice and legitimacy. It represents mappers in the UK, but doesn't control them. You don't even have to be a member to receive the benefits, but if you are then you have opportunity to set the direction. I believe that the individual membership subs are nominal to reflect that there are no direct benefits (apart from camera loan, or a microgrant). Your comments have made me ponder whether there should be some.

Hi Jez

I am merely voicing my opinion and you are correct in that we are like a union i.e. as unpaid workers we should be able to organise ourselves to gain advantages not available to us individually. Specifically how to make our freely given time more effective and efficient. For example, apart from surveying we should not have to spend a time getting errors that we identify reviewed and amended by the relevant agencies - a union should/could have 'weight'

I also agree that the purpose is not simply to replace OS but with sufficient clout then OS are more likely to genuinely collaborate with OSM.

Why I bang on about purpose, is that without that clarity it is difficult to work towards developing function (what is produced), process (how) and structure (who) etc. Part of the process of identifying the purpose (which should be constantly reviewed) is how OSM in the UK meets (or can meet) the needs of the wider community (including businesses, government etc)

It strikes me that OSM is uniquely positioned to facilitate wide collaboration for the benefit of society (e.g. reduce deaths per the example I cited), the economy (e.g. efficient delivery of goods and services) and the environment (e.g. modelling using spatial data that can help reduce impacts). I guess like many of my ideas this is probably seen as a step too far but given that you are already talking to significant organisations, perhaps this could be explored with potential collaborators.

Cheers

Nick

BTW - re "With Ordnance Survey making Open Data releases, their data becomes more usable to casual users." - not proactive i.e. they only give what has limited use (e.g. UPRN without any real value - ask Robert Whittaker) or no longer of interest to them

I've long thought that our corporate rates are absurdly low. Half the problem getting them to pay is probably that it's such a pathetic amount of money nobody will take it seriously.

Hi all. Those members of OSM UK should now have seen the AGM notice so will know that we included the following proposal:

• Members: £7.50

• Corporate members (small): £75

Much higher numbers were suggested and are seen in some of the other local groups outside the UK. Nevertheless we have used this lower figure as last year's AGM demonstrated the challenge of increasing fees too much.

The £7.50 figure comes from the current £5 plus new costs that we have picked up this year. Those are the cost of Loomio and the cost of our web server which we are picking up for the first time. A huge thank you to Stu for covering the server costs on his own for the last few years.

The £75 comes from the same percentage increase we applied to member.

I signed up to auto renew membership - does this increase in rate happen automatically or do I have to update something?
Incidentally, do we have membership numbers that we can add to our Loomio profile to show that we are members of OpenStreetMap UK? I realise that not everyone using OSM UK Loomio group is not necessarily a member but should we not encourage all members (including corporate members) to use Loomio so that as a group we make 'better decisions without meetings'?

I note that Loomio fees for non-profit varies but based on annual payment: $US 200.00 (£150.75) per year for up to 10 'active' users and additional active users at $US 20.00 (£15.07) per year. So if most/all members are active on Loomio i.e. they want to be involved in decision making, then the proposed £7.50 fee falls short? Or maybe I have misunderstood the situation?

We're on the Community Plan (which is different from the Community Active Plan) as we have no paid staff. So at the moment our fee is less than £100.

That makes sense - so based on just over £2 per active user that is around 50% of members?

I am wondering if this Loomio group should be for members of OSM UK only or do we allow anyone expressing an interest but then 'encourage' them to join OSM UK?
N.B. Loomio enables admin to 'Invite guests to thread'.
On that note about membership of this Loomio group, as far as I can see currently it is 'Open' but the "recommended privacy setting for new groups is Closed" see the section of the user manual.
Is this something that the Board has discussed?