[OSGeo-Board] Re: Voting / Associate Membership

[Chris Holmes]

Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> Arnulf Christl wrote:
> 
>> ARTICLE I Purposes of the Corporation; Non-Profit Status
>> on:
>> http://www.fossgis.de/osgeo/index.php/Draft_OSGEO_Bylaws
>>
>> We should probably move this to stable asap, currently it does not say 
>> this clearly yet:
>>
>> https://www.osgeo.org/content/governance/foundation/members/membership.html 
>>
> 
> 
> Arnulf,
> 
> I don't think we should be moving the bylaws to stable (or better
> yet to the osgeo.org web site) till they have been adopted.  If there
> are no substantial issues perhaps we will be able to accomplish this on
> Monday.
> 
>  >Chris writes:
> 
>>> I also think we're going to have to really think through how to make 
>>> those who don't get 'elected', those who aren't 'members' feel included. 
> 
> 
> Arnulf writes:
> 
>> This should be a major effort and be addressed parallel to the 
>> nomination, voting and presentation of results. Basically whoever 
>> wants to do something can do so using the Wiki. I have seen the term 
>> do-ocracy come up again and again, seconding, enhancing and extending 
>> the term meritocracy that was part of the idea of the foundation right 
>> from the start.
> 
> 
> I concur.
> 
> I would really like to see us in a position to have associate members
> as soon as possible, and to make the associate member role reasonably
> formal.  We should be collecting names and contact information for all
> members and associate members. I would like a public membership list
> something like:
> 
>   Members of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation
>   ================================================
> 
> Members listed with a (v) after their name are voting members, all
> members without the (v) are associate members.
> 
> Aardvark Jones
> Arnulf Christl (v)
> ...
> 
> ie. the point being to try as much as possible to treat all members
> as members, with the voting distinction being a minor addendum.
This sounds ideal to me.  What I think would be great is if we had the 
minimal 'requirement' to be a member be that you write a couple 
paragraphs on who you are and what you do.  Just so we know who all is 
involved.  Of course one can contribute even not being a member, but I 
feel if you 'enter' our community it'd be nice to know a bit about you.

Maybe as part of one's 'profile'?  Can collabnet do that?  And then have 
a place to view everyone's profile?  Make it so anyone can sign up for 
the site and do stuff, but you become a 'member' when you fill out a few 
paragraphs about yourself?

Another thought is that similar to the (v) we could have a (fof) friend 
of foundation - those that paid a $20 support fee or some such.

> 
> How soon could we have an associate member signup thingy on the web
> site Daniel?
> 
> 
>> Anyway, a good thing will be to stress the fact that down to earth 
>> work is involved in being an actively representing part of the 
>> Foundation.
>>
>> == Non Voting Members ==
>> Still - every nominated member that is *not* elected will be *outside* 
>> of the Foundation altogether as everybody else who did not even bother 
>> to try to get nominated. This is downright harmful! It is therefore 
>> very important to implement a meaningful member status for active 
>> "non-voting-members" or "friends-of-the-foundation".
> 
> 
> Right.  Per the draft bylaws this is called associate member.
> 
>> == Wiki Use ==
>> In my interpretation the group of "active non-voting-members" is 
>> currently represented by the growing user list of the Wiki.
>>
>> But the URL is a strange .de, second level dir and still not public. 
>> We are not publishing it because it has not been resolved yet by the 
>> BOD how to do it. It would take me a few minutes only to get it known 
>> in around 50 OSGIS channels - but I didn't do this yet because we 
>> never sorted out whether to leave it outside the CN infrastructure, 
>> switch URL or whatever?!
>>
>>  From what I recollect Frank suggested that the pre fossgis might not 
>> harm anybody. That it is remote from the official CN makes it better 
>> to encourage editing and differentiates it from stable documents. So 
>> what to do about this?
>>
>> Maybe I should add these topics to the next BOD meeting?
> 
> 
> Note that I have been pointing people to stuff in the wiki in
> #osgeo and on the discuss list.  I think we have just been hesitant
> to promote directly on the main web site.
> 
> My hope is that the Web Committee will be able to address how to move
> the wiki within .osgeo.org within the next few weeks after which point
> we might be more aggressive about encouraging it's use.
+1

Chris

> 
>> Not just that. I think it is a pity that your textss are too long to 
>> read. Not many will really read through them, so the hits your pages 
>> collect are no indication that people really read it. This is sad but 
>> true. We are collectively educated to collect information that fits on 
>> one screen at maximum, 800 by 600 res. I have no idea how to address 
>> this and it might well keep us busy for the next years trying to find 
>> out.
> 
> 
> I can't believe you are saying this after your huge wiki advocacy post!
> 
> Best regards,

-- 
Chris Holmes
The Open Planning Project
thoughts at: http://cholmes.wordpress.com
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: cholmes.vcf
Type: text/x-vcard
Size: 269 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/board/attachments/20060223/05e58f20/attachment.vcf>