[Board] Added "OSGeo Charter Responsibilities"

[Jeff McKenna]

Hi Venka,

I too have several thoughts on the Charter Member election process from 
this year, I just wasn't sure if I should wait to explain them until 
after the Board election, or in person in Portland to the tribe, at the 
AGM there, or....   but anyway you have brought up good points and I 
will respond.

Jorge did amazing work on setting up an electronic voting system, that 
obviously we will use from now on.  Thanks so much to Jorge for being 
the champion.

What I noticed in this year's Charter Member election was that:

- we had some very poor nominations (maybe a one sentence intro, and no 
link to an OSGeo wiki page for addition info)

- the new rules to be accepted of "more YES votes than NO votes, as well 
as greater than 5% of charter members who voted" (which I can't even 
find on our Elections wiki page now, I had to find the initial email), 
from looking at the results did in fact lower the bar too low (every 
nomination, poor to good, was accepted).

I think we tried to improve the selection process, but we made it a 
little too easy to become a Charter Member.  I wonder, if that "5%" 
number was changed to something like "51%", how our results would have 
been this year?  I am not sure, but I do wonder.

I am very appreciative of having 64 new Charter Members this year, for 
an amazing pool of 244 Charter Members now in total.  But I think the 
community should work with the CRO and the OSGeo Board to tweak this new 
process for the 2015 Charter Member election.

-jeff







On 2014-08-15 8:53 PM, Venkatesh Raghavan wrote:
>
> About "crucial issues" there a many, one of the recent example was the
> new rules for
> Charter Member (CM) Election. I think that the rules of the CM election
> needs a broad
> consensus from the membership and cannot be changed by board decision
> alone.
> How can the board change the rules of CM elections when it is CMs that
> elect
> the board in the first place?
>
> With the revised election process item 6 [1], 5% vote of charter
> membership to become CM
> is making the hurdle so low that it makes the whole election process
> (one that Jorge has worked
> so very hard) a waste of time and effort. Can someone point me to a
> volunteer organization
> where one could be elected  by getting mere 5% vote from the electorate?
>
> I suggest that the new board that will start functioning soon to revisit
> CM election rules
> (which, I think, is a "crucial issue") and after seek broader consensus
> from the charter members
> (through electronic voting of necessary) re-formulate these rules.
>
> Please note that I raise the issue about a process and not against any
> individual.
> I am very pleased to see great new team of CM has entered OSGeo, I am
> also glad
> to see the excellent list of nominees for the Board elections.
>
> Venka
>
> [1] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Membership_Process_2014#Nominations
>
> P.S. I could have made my views on the new CM election rules earlier. I
> did not realize
> that rules has changed until the election process had started and
> refrained from expressing
> my views until the elections were over. Perhaps there are others who
> feel the same as me
> and I urge them to speak up now, so that we could make our community
> better.
>
>>
>> -jeff
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 2014-08-15 10:39 AM, Venkatesh Raghavan wrote:
>>>
>>> As I have mentioned on many occasions before, I hope that our Charter
>>> Members will be assigned more responsibilities in future decision making
>>> on some crucial issues. Now that we have tested our new voting system,
>>> it could also be used to seek broad based consensus form our excellent
>>> Charter Membership on some some of these crucial issues.
>>>
>>> Venka
>>> _______________________________________________
>