[OSGeo-Board] Board Priorities

[Jo Walsh]

dear Frank, all,
On Thu, Mar 23, 2006 at 12:21:34AM -0500, Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> In fact, the mission and goals statement was approved, and published on
> the public web site a couple meetings ago.
>   https://www.osgeo.org/content/foundation/about.html

Heh, I should know better than to take the word of a wiki as Truth.

> I proposed it, and forget (or never knew) that we had planned to
> wait for the full board for this.  I am hopeful that the mission
> portion of this will be acceptable to the entire board.

https://board.osgeo.org/servlets/ReadMsg?listName=board&msgNo=546 
suggested to me that a condition of accepting the nomination is to accept 
the Mission completely, so i think your hopes are likely to be fulfilled ;)

> >Prioritising the elements of the Mission, makes designing a
> >coherent Plan easier, indicating what can provide best value to the
> >Foundation for any given amount of Effort. 
> >If a prioritisation exercise like the spreadsheet gets used in future 
> >either to come to terms with the Mission or to help with the design of 
> >the Plan, I think everyone who wants to make Effort should be able to
> >participate in doing that, and it could be a useful expression of
> >collective will to work with.
> 
> I think your point here is that other foundation members (voting and
> otherwise) should be able to provide input on the priorities, and that
> ultimately progress is likely to be made where people wish to invest
> effort.  Is that right?

That's a good description of my point, yes. It looks too self-evident to 
have been worth saying when you rephrase it like that; progress is collective.

> I do generally agree with both of these points.  But I do think that it
> can be helpful for the board to identify priority efforts that will
> setup a feedback loop of excitement that helps get the foundation rolling
> effectively. Having some worthwhile successes within the next few months
> will help motivate more support for the foundation, in volunteer effort
> as well as financially.  Furthermore, I think we as the board can provide
> some encouragement, and help facilitate efforts we consider high priority.

I think I very much agree with you, the board is already an expression of 
collective will, just by existing. What is prioritised here is likely
to map really well to the priorities of the whole Foundation. And an
ideal is to provide a "leading example" in facilitation. If it's an
exercise in mapping out our priorities for one another and getting
each other encouraged, then I'm all for it; I would like to get into a 
feedback loop of excitement on a personal basis. But I also want to be
sure that I'm listening carefully, and not just driving straight towards 
what really compels me. Successes can be internal or external, 
ideally both at the same time. The more people invested in making a
project a success, the more success that generates in the world. 

Maybe this is a bit abstractly philosophical, but so was the leading
question, I thought ;)

bestest,


jo