[OSGeo-Board] opening and organizing

[Frank Warmerdam]

Chris Holmes wrote:
>Gary Lang wrote:
>> So Committees are one sets of projects. Another would be stuff like
>> "Where 2.0 Approach".
>>
>> This last one shows some of the problem - Nat Torkington called me this
>> morning and among other things asked me to speak at the conference, and
>> only by accident through our conversation discovered I was on the OSGeo
>> board. We should coordinate on Where 2.0 as one of the OSGeo projects.
>>
>> There may be other things.
> Well, I'd say this is a sub project of the publicity and visibility 
> committee.
> 
>>
>> So what I'm looking to do and will do if no one else is, is to create a
>> table that shows fields such as:
>>
>> "Task/Issue" "Owner" "Date Due" "Description" "Communication needed"
> Isn't this kind of thing what the integrated task trackers of collabnet 
> are for?  So the visibility committee would make a task about where 2.0? 
>  And it's up to them to keep the appropriate people in the loop?

Chris / Gary,

I would concur with Chris that "Where 2.0" is a task of VisCom.   We create
committees so that we (the board) don't have to be directly responsible for
everything going on.  If Where 2.0 is an important conference and we want
to make a substantial presence known there, I hope VisCom would indicate
that in a report to the board (or we would ask).  But generally speaking I
don't think I (as a board member) need to know each conference that VisCom
coordinates someone to attend and speak on OSGeo's behalf.

I personally don't feel like we need a coordinated master task list, though
I am willing to defer to others if they think it is necessary (and are willing
to make it happen).  What we need to ensure, as a board, is that the
appropriate committees are established, and are operating to our expectations.
Not that we are on top of each action item of the committees.

I expect many of us will want to be observers (ie. subscribed to the committee
mailing lists) for several of these projects as a mechanism to keep aware
of what is going on.

PS. I'm still a bit unclear on this whole "officer" issue.  In my head I
still distinguish between fairly independent projects (like GDAL) and
committees created by the board for a specific area of responsibility
like viscom, webcom, or the incubator committee.  But in all cases I am
happy to say that the chair needs to be approved (ie. appointed) by the
board and is the official conduit for reporting.

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