[Oceania-Board] resignation

[Adam Steer]

Alex, all

Miasma has multiple meanings, the intended one being the figurative
sense of 'unhealthy atmosphere' [1]. I apologise if I caused offence,
the intention was to say what I think and in this case it is plain
that a fresh breeze is needed.

And of course, I have been a director for the past 12 months so I am
not outside of, or apart from my comments here. I own this state as
much as anyone.

Just today, the board has elected to step around established
communication channels to make a decision. In the past month, multiple
decisions have been run outside of established processes and channels.
In the past year, the board has been unable to address direct queries
from community members about what membership means and whether we have
assessed open alternatives to some of the systems and tools we use. We
had to push hard to have this open channel! We were unable to resolve
that we should treat money dedicated to inclusivity programs
differently to a generally (and completely validly) conservative
budget. We no longer publish meeting minutes. We have also had a chair
resign citing irresolvable ethical concerns. This is serious! And to
reiterate, this is as much my responsibility as anyone's. I am deeply
concerned with how my actions have contributed to all this, and will
go away with a lot to reflect on.

We cannot keep saying 'yay its all going fine' if it clearly is not.
We need to be committed to saying what goes wrong as much as what goes
well, this is how a healthy organisation works. Personally speaking it
would be 100% wrong to say I've had a wonderful time. I haven't. This
board has had no problem throwing metaphorical stones in my direction,
and I've felt isolated and unsupported on basic stuff - like 'hey can
we do this on the public list/we need to allow more voting time/ we
need to think about X or Y or Z with respect to data privacy and
ethics'.

I want our community and incoming board members to see that this
happens sometimes - it would be a failure of leadership to not expose
this part of directorship and its frustrations. Community building is
hard. Consensus building is hard. We rarely get what we want. Thats
OK. We need to be open about it. Each director will have a different
impression of how things are going, all of them are valid and all need
to be respected.

And yes, some parts are going great! The incoming SIGs look fantastic
and a wonderful way to deploy OSGeo Oceania as a backing organisation.
The group of nominees for the next board are all amazing. The
financial reports are excellent, and the election process is as good
as it can be with a view to resolving issues that caused the
resignation of a board chair.

So a huge congratulations for everyone involved in making those happen
- it is a lot of work and a real success that these things have been
done!

As a final word, we are shown time and again that the open geospatial
community in Oceania functions pretty well without OSGeo Oceania, so
it is a mistake to say the organisation is critical to the community's
survival. I've evolved the view over the past two years that the niche
of OSGeo Oceania is provide whatever is needed for the community to
move from 'functions pretty well' to 'functions really well and
smoothly and easily', and our efforts as a board should be focussed on
gathering the energy of the community into decision making and how we
function - which takes longer and is harder, but is ultimately more
rewarding.

I'm happy that the people still on the board have enough energy and
enthusiasm left to do more. I've really enjoyed the parts where we
have felt 'on mission' (see above) and got a lot done toward making a
strong foundation for our regional community to use for whatever it
wants. And I really look forward to what happens next with a really
interesting set of new ideas potentially coming into directorships.

Regards,

Adam


[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/miasma

On Fri, 27 Nov 2020 at 10:38, Alex Leith <alexgleith at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hey Adam
>
> Thank you for the time that you've dedicated to this Board.
>
> I'd like to recognise the work you put into our first conference and gathering the overwhelming support in leading the sponsorship efforts that year, and for your leadership and knowledge sharing. The website for this year's conference was put together by you, on open tools, like you say and it served us well. And thanks for setting up the Outreach and Communications Working Group with new chairs and  ensuring that it has the continuity that it needs.
>
> I'd like you to think about your comments, both in the annual report and in these public foraa though. Saying that our organisation is "in a bit of a miasma" is really not ok. You're a champion of diversity and inclusion, and you've long supported our travel grant program. And to say that the group of five of us who met today, as friends, as people taking time out of our jobs and lives to continue this thing we all started together have some kind of stench about us is something that I choose to take offence to. How can we build a good, inclusive, supportive community of nice people if we go about saying that folks we disagree with or who do things differently than we would are unpleasant or unhealthy?
>
> I can reflect on my year, and there's been conflict and uncertainty, some shocking leaders around the world blatantly lying while people die or are isolated from their family. And I'm grateful for what I have and I look forward to building positive relationships and a strong community and to keep putting my time into running a strong organisation that can help us to achieve our goals. In the Board meeting today I said that we have this organisation to support our open community, and I write this letter to you in the open. But our organisation, at the very core, is an enabler of the things we want to do, and to do that, it needs to survive. And it will. Without me, and without you, it'll survive, because people like you and me put our time into it, and in our own small ways, keep things going. By throwing stones and seeding conflict, as you're doing, it's going to hurt people like me. It causes stress, and it'll discourage people from being involved. But that's ok, because there are enough of us in this being positive and keeping on going, which, in this most ridiculous of years, is enough. Sometimes enough is enough.
>
> So, thank you for your time, and I hope that we can have a beer together in a strange place some day in the future.
>
> Alex
>
>
> On Fri, 27 Nov 2020 at 20:04, Adam Steer <adam.d.steer at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi board
>>
>> It makes no sense to hang around until the election, so here is my
>> resignation - which should have come back in August.
>>
>> I really do wish OSGeo Oceania all the best. To be blunt I have had a
>> pretty terrible time sitting in a directors' seat, and my comments in
>> the annual report stand.
>>
>> At the moment I see the organisation in a bit of a miasma. I think the
>> core of the issue is reflected in comments from some of our community
>> members, about the organisation losing its way a little - thinking too
>> much about being 'organisation-ey' and not enough about 'well as long
>> as ASIC is happy we can shape an organisation to be whatever the
>> broader community wants, and in the end we just made this up and kind
>> of elbowed our way into being representatives of this community
>> anyway'. Yes it is more work to engage more people in decision making,
>> yes it is more work to do things like run all our infrastructure on
>> open platforms.
>>
>> My response to that, as always, is that we have an energetic and
>> wonderfully positive community to draw upon, and all the organisation
>> has to do is step back and let that energy happen!
>>
>> All the best in future endeavours, and as already mentioned, I'm happy
>> to be around to support new directors.
>>
>> Kind regards,
>>
>> Adam
>>
>> --
>> Dr. Adam Steer
>> https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Adam_Steer
>> _______________________________________________
>> Oceania-Board mailing list
>> Oceania-Board at lists.osgeo.org
>> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/oceania-board
>
>
>
> --
> Alex Leith
> m: 0419189050