[Board] President and President-elect

[Seven (aka Arnulf)]

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Board,
picking up an idea we tossed around for two consecutive years but
never got around to actually implementing. In my opinion the OSGeo
president  is not a power position (like the US president) but a more
formal role. The most contentious thing the president of OSGeo will
ever do is adjudicate in cases of ties. And represent OSGeo. This
means that we will probably never see retail politics with election
campaigns and people overly attaching to the role. Hopefully.

Another aspect is that it is hard stop being president when it is an
indefinitely termed position. It will always make the impression of
"stepping down" for some unknown reason. I actually know from own
experience. It will always leave some room for speculation and gossip
which is never good for an organization that lives off its kudos,
transparency and authenticity.

Therefore I suggest that we limit the term for presidents to two
years, the first of which is as president-elect. It is a common model
to elect the upcoming president a year before their term so that there
is no void at the end of the current president's term. It would also
fit in with our staggered board elections - given that someone from
the "new" half of the board volunteers for the role of
president-elect. It should probably be possible to run again for
presidency after a full term has ended but then first starting in the
president-elect role again. I don't think that 4 years in a row as I
did are that good an idea. Plus it burnt me out quite a bit.

Things obviously go wrong all the time: a director leaves the board
early, president has to / wants to step down in mid-term, we have an
interim director with only one year, none of the new directors wants
to become president-elect right away, etc. So the president-elect role
is no silver bullet and will not fix everything but it might help to
stabilize things a bit and take away some pressure and expectations
from that role.

Best regards,
Arnulf

PS:
There are more issues around elections and governance in general which
I hope to address with a small sub committee or some such in October.
Some of these changes (bylaws) will require a charter member vote
which is a big thing we never before had to do.

I brought this one up now because we might want to have it sorted out
for the next presidential term which starts after board elections are
done. And I think the board should be OK to decide this on its own
because it does not remove a key position but just changes some
modalities around it.

- -- 
Exploring Space, Time and Mind
http://arnulf.us
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