<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 14px; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; "><div>Dearest Board:</div><div><br></div><div>I'm in the midst of updating our membership records.</div><div><br></div><div>As Arnulf will attest, it is extraordinarily difficult to keep track of the email addresses of so many people from so many different parts of the world. In past years, I have also tried valiantly to track people's mail addresses, affiliations, phone numbers, nationalities, and more. It may have been a good idea back in The Olden Days when we were looking to be a more formal organization; today, I don't see the point. (To my knowledge, in the history of OSGeo no one has ever actually needed in to use the contact info we've strived to maintain.)</div><div><br></div><div>Therefore, I'm going to just record the following:</div><div> - member ID</div><div> - full name</div><div> - email address 1</div><div><div> - email address 2 (optional)</div></div><div> - nationality</div><div> - date joined</div><div> - date removed (optional)</div><div> - voting record</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Notes:</div><div><br></div><div>* "Full name" is your full, complete, legal name expressed, e.g. as it appears on your passport. We do not track nicks or handles, nor do we differentiate first/last/family/surname distinctions. When alphabetized, the first letter of your legal name string is used. For example, I am "Michael P. Gerlek" and am therefore filed under "M". (Yes. Really. If you think you want to change this policy, Arnulf and I will laugh at your innocence and naiveté :-)</div><div><br></div><div>* Yes, I have removed "affiliation": while demographically interesting, there's no business need to try to keep track of this (esp. as we define the Foundation to be made up of individuals only, no corporate or other organization entities).</div><div><br></div><div>* "Voting record" means "did you vote or not?" — no, we do not keep a permanent record who you voted for! This information is used to track members who are becoming inactive.</div><div><br></div><div>* I'm also not recording "country of residence" anymore. A number of us think no more of crossing borders than we do of crossing the street. (Yes, I'm looking at you, Europe...) Again, this data is certainly demographically interesting, but passport-nationality is more straightforward to track.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>I'm unilaterally making this changes, as Secretary Pro Tem. The board is free to change this policy when a new Secretary is put in place; we have the old data, so someone could pick up from before I made this change.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Finally, I'll note that we should maintain contact records for the board members. I consider that a separate issue, though, and won't address it as part of this project.</div><div><br></div><div><div>-mpg</div><div><br></div></div></body></html>