Executive Directory, energy, etc.

[Frank Warmerdam]

Folks,

I just wanted to make a few points that I didn't get to in the meeting.

1) I think an executive director is important to the success and operation
    of OSGeo.  While I am somewhat nervous about getting the right person,
    and while I also feel the need to boost volunteer involvement and
    "devolution to committees", ultimately I think our success will be quite
    limited without a "go to" person to answer questions, keep things moving,
    and apply substantial amounts of time to needed activities.

    I don't really understand why things are "different" in Europe, but I
    certainly wouldn't object to an ED who is European (or from elsewhere)
    as long as they were the right person.  Hopefully Arnulf can explain his
    Europe/NAmerica issue to me.

    I do have a concern about OSGeo becoming staff heavy and this taking away
    from the spirit of volunteerism and members feeling a sense of personal
    involvement and ownership.  However, I think being very careful about
    growing staff beyond "1" is the place to work on this.

2) I'm not sure how to build energy within the organization, but I do think
    we need to keep working in this area.  Better communication from the board
    is something that has been mentioned in the past as helping, and I managed
    to pull off one "newsletter" type thing.  Beyond seeing my own failings
    on a number of fronts, I'm not sure what to do.  I don't want it to be
    dependent on Autodesk flying folks around all the time.

    Whatever we do though, I think needs to be realistic in terms of peoples
    time and financial resources.  Face to face meetings are helpful, but
    even if that travel was paid for (mostly not, for me) there is a limit to
    how much time I am willing to spare for these.  I'm sure that is true of
    others as well.

3) We need to find some happy medium between organic bottom-up volunteer
    self organization, and top down, prioritized, funded and directed progress.
    The more organic and self organized we are, the more healthy we will be
    in many senses, but we also need to be able to act on priorities fairly
    quickly.

Hmm, it seems I had more points I wanted to make in the meeting, but now
I can't recall what they were.

Best regards,
-- 
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGF, http://osgeo.org