[Board] Sponsorship funding and value for money

[Markus Neteler]

Dear board members, Tyler,

excuse me for my silence on this thread, I was changing job and
am settled now in a new *real* position. This included GRASS
migration to OSGeo and the real work to continue. Anyway, I
should become operative now again :)

I think that a couple of important things have been said here
which I won't repeat of course. It looks to me that a part is
caused by lack of communication (i.e., no regular reports as well
as no (maybe I am wrong) one-stop-shop to find back these reports,
at least http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/User:Tmitchell doesn't list them).
Also OSGeo charter member may be interested in that.

On Jan 8, 2008 6:32 AM, Frank Warmerdam <warmerdam at pobox.com> wrote:
> Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo) wrote:
> > I've struggled with understanding this whole thread, so correct me if
> > I'm wrong.  The main point I'm taking away is that fundraising and
> > sponsorship need more focus, particularly from me and my time.  I accept
> > this and agree.  I hope you can leave it with me to manage the priority
> > conflicts that I have already acknowledged and to spend more time on
> > this front.
>
> Tyler,
>
> I look forward to this.

Hoe about sort of not-time-consuming voting about priorities of ED? And
do this all 3 months or so for having better sync between ED and board?

...
> > In our board meeting in Victoria we discussed having more frequent
> > updates, but that there was no interest in getting more detail.  So I'm
> > not sure what you mean by "more granular reports", because I thought I
> > provided a good one.
>
> I found the Dec 11 report quite good, and I would be pleased to receive
> this sort of report on a monthly basis.  BTW, I think there was a
> consensus that we would like to see an ED report 2-4 days before board
> meetings so we have a bit of time to digest it before the meeting.  Our
> next board meeting is this Friday, so a new report soon would be
> desirable.

+1 from me...

Then I also agree the downgrading the journal on ED's priority list
and getting more things done on the "Sponsoring OSGeo" front.
In the end this touched also ED's budget.

...
> I don't see the ED getting value for money as being tied too much to
> the activities of the ED.  But the ED will often be a main contact with
> sponsors, and will help project a professional and organized sense of
> the foundation.

Right. I guess that industry representatives prefer to speak
to an ED rather than to a random charter member. And we should
probably even "sell" these meetings.

Generally, we need to possibly synthezise the ED task list a bit to
get a better overview what has been done where. If it is there,
apologise.

Even more generally, I agree with Dave that we have achieved a
heck of a lot in the past year!

Talk to you later,
Markus