[FOSS4G-Oceania] Governance

[adam steer]

Hi John

I’ll need to go and check my words - I’m totally agreed with having an
organisation board; and ad hoc conference committees.

My comments were aimed only at maintaining independence of the LOC to run
their own event, the board of the organisation should have the lightest
touch possible. The board should not elect LOC chairs - the LOC should do
that for themselves and the board’s only action here is to rubberstamp the
decision of the LOC or provide guidance if the board as a whole has an
evidence-based rationale to disagree with the LOC's choice.

And while yes, the board could reasonably be vested with the power to
remove LOC members, that power needs to be wrapped in words which prevent
the board using it *unless there is a conflict the LOC cannot resolve*.

This line of thinking is behind suggesting that the Wellington 2019 event
is now firmly in Daniel’s hands - to form an LOC who will propose a chair
they want to work with. The 2018 committee should only intervene if asked
to do so.

I also agree with Greg’s suggestion - a subcommittee to look at governance
models and report back to the broader group.

I hope that’s clarifying - and again, still 100% behind a standing board
(perhaps with 2-3 year terms, with half board elections every half-term?)
with ad hoc conference LOCs

Cheers






On Sat, 8 Dec 2018 at 10:36, John Bryant <johnwbryant at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks Adam, great input.
>
> It sounds like you might be proposing an alternative model, along the
> lines of: the current committee hands over to a new committee, which is the
> team identified in the Wellington proposal, and this new committee is
> responsible for organising the conference and any governance issues. Does
> this sound right?
>
> If so, I see it as a perfectly valid model we should consider in addition
> to the proposal in the doc.
>
> I will say, though, that I see some disadvantages to that approach:
> - I think ongoing governance takes on greater importance if & when we
> consider additional activities beyond an annual conference. The 2018
> committee has raised governance issues from time to time over the year, but
> we never had the bandwidth to take these on until post-event, and I suspect
> a 2019 committee would face similar difficulties.
> - We've identified a few significant outstanding issues in regard to
> forming an entity, determining a process for membership, and determining a
> process for future rotation of events. I'd see it as quite onerous for a
> committee to deal with these issues while organising a conference.
>
> Part of the idea of forming a board + conf committee is efficiency -
> running this conference in 2018 required a huge amount of work on
> everyone's parts, when added to the work of building an organisation. The
> process for planning and running future conferences could be made much more
> sustainable (ie. not requiring people to take months off of work). By
> having a board for governance and continuity, and a conf committee (ie.
> LOC) for running the main show, we hopefully gain a division of labour that
> spreads the work load across more people.
>
> Anyway - I'm super happy to be having this discussion, I think there are
> plenty of ways we could do this, and finding the balance between too much
> bureaucracy and not enough forward thinking is tricky.
>
> jb
>
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-- 
Dr. Adam Steer
http://spatialised.net
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Adam_Steer
http://au.linkedin.com/in/adamsteer
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0046-7236
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