[Board] OSGeo is becoming irrelevant. Here's why. Let's fix it.

[Jeff McKenna]

Thanks for these thoughts Maxi, I too was planning on bringing the new 
board together face-to-face, something that we tried to do with this 
past board, twice; I think this time we will go on with the face-to-face 
even if one or two members just cannot make it.  Simply pick a location 
that has one direct flight for each board member, a hotel with a room 
with a projector and whiteboard, have a set agenda, and discuss big 
picture and goals for the foundation, for 2 days. I am quite excited to 
do this with the new board.  A board sprint.

-jeff


On 2015-09-26 3:40 AM, Massimiliano Cannata wrote:
> Darrel YOU ARE WRONG.... BUT
> osgeo is a great and successful community and this alone desrve the
> OSGeo existence.
>
> Before we only had project oriented communities (mapserver, grass,
> etc). But now we have a place in the network to get togheter with all
> projects and users. Aren't we using stack of softwere instead of a
> single solution very often?
> FOSS4G is where we exchange ideas, create innovation and get fun also.
>
> Some excellent work is done also in some working groups... incubation
> and geo4all for example...
>
> So you are WRONG!
>
> BUT.... i have to agree that things could even be better :-)
> In my opinion (and this is part of my manifesto even if i still have one
> more year to serve the board):
> - we need to redefine objectives of the association cause things have
> changed (reault framework...)
> - we need to better promote our valuable software and community
> (marketing. ..)
> - we need to review and redefine rules so that they are transparent and
> clear (communication... )
> - we need to lower the rates of our international meetings to be more
> inclusive
> - we need a plan for investment (investment plan..)
>
> So i call for a face2face meeting of 2 days of all the board members in
> the next months to discuss all these points.
> Apparently the last board was not able to set a date, but i'm keen that
> the new board will be able to do it. It will aslo he agood starting
> point to define our working plan...
>
> The i call all of you charter member to help and do things... continuing
> in shaking the community but also propose and act to make the world a
> better place. Then if you think the world would be better without
> osgeo... well... be part of the community is not mandatory :-)
>
> Best
> Proudly member of osgeo
> Maxi
>
> Il 25/Set/2015 21:57, "Darrell Fuhriman" <darrell at garnix.org
> <mailto:darrell at garnix.org>> ha scritto:
>
>     The recent discussion on the board list
>     <https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/board/2015-September/013172.html>that
>     came out of the question of the 2014 videos has got me thinking
>     about a few things again, and I want to try to get them out there.
>
>     Grab a mug of your favorite liquid and hunker down, because I put
>     some time and effort into this, and your own well considered reply
>     is appreciated.
>
>     Keep in mind that all of these comments are coming from my personal
>     perspective, which, like everyone’s, is an incomplete picture of the
>     whole. Much of what I’m going to say has been rolling around my head
>     for a while, so I’m just going to put it out there.
>
>     I will start with a provocative thesis:
>
>     OSGeo lacks visionary unified leadership and without it will become
>     irrelevant.
>
>     Of course, making such a claim requires support. So let me break
>     down the statement.
>
>     “Visionary leadership” is really two things, “vision” and
>     “leadership.” I will address each in turn.
>
>
>         OSGeo lacks vision
>
>     I looked at the list of “Goals” for OSGeo
>     <http://www.osgeo.org/content/foundation/about.html>. I wonder: when
>     was the last time these goals were evaluated for both success and
>     relevancy?
>
>     Here is my own opinion of success of some of  these goals. (In the
>     interest of brevity, I haven’t tried to tackle everything. That’s
>     left as an exercise to the reader.)
>
>
>           Example 1
>
>     To provide resources for foundation projects - eg. infrastructure,
>     funding, legal.
>
>     Allow me to break each of those examples down.
>
>
>             Infrastructure
>
>     It’s true that OSGeo provides some infrastructure, such as Trac
>     instance, Mailman, SVN repos. If the budget is to be believed, we
>     pay some $3,500/yr to OSUOSL for said infrastructure. I wonder if
>     such a service is necessary, however. Issue tracking and source
>     control are much better provided by Github, which is free for
>     organization such as ours.
>     I say this because a) that’s money that could be better spent
>     elsewhere and b) supporting these services burns precious volunteer
>     time (more on that below).
>
>     There are clear cost savings available, which are not taken
>     advantage of. For example, OSGeo could be hosting FOSS4G
>     infrastructure: conference websites and registration, a central
>     location for conference videos (regardless of platform/provider).
>     This neglect is especially galling given that FOSS4G is OSGeo’s sole
>     source of income.
>
>
>             Funding
>
>     OSGeo does not fund projects. It has provided some funds to pay for
>     Code Sprints — $15k in 2014 according to the budget
>     <http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OSGeo_Budget_2014>.
>
>
>             Legal
>
>     I see nothing that has been done on this front recently. Please feel
>     free to correct me.
>
>
>             Conclusion
>
>     OSGeo, where it actually does what it claims, has not adapted in
>     ways that could save money.
>
>     My grade: D
>
>
>         Example 2
>
>     To promote freely available geodata - free software is useless
>     without data.
>
>     The geodata working group is dead. As near as I can tell by perusing
>     the mailing list archives, and the wiki, there has been no
>     meaningful activity in the past two years (maybe more).
>
>     My grade: F
>
>
>         Example 3
>
>     To promote the use of open source software in the geospatial
>     industry (not just foundation software) - eg. PR, training, outreach.
>
>     The Board of Directors
>     <http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Board_of_Directors#Packaging_and_Marketing>page
>     says:
>
>
>             Packaging and Marketing
>
>     OSGeo’s marketing effort has primarily been focused around the
>     packaging and documentation efforts of OSGeo-Live, and to a lesser
>     extend[sic], osgeo4w. […] It has been entirely driven by volunteer
>     labour, with 140 OSGeo-Live volunteers, and printing costs have been
>     covered by local events or sponsors. In the last couple of years,
>     OSGeo has covered local chapter expenses required to purchase
>     non-consumable items for conference booths (such as a retractable
>     banner). In moving forward, OSGeo hope to extend marketing reach by
>     providing co-contributions toward printing costs of consumable items
>     at conferences, such as toward OSGeo-Live DVDs.
>
>
>             Local Chapters
>
>     Much of OSGeo’s marketing initiates are applied at the local level.
>     In many cases, this is best supported through as little as an email
>     list and wiki page. OSGeo also supports local chapters by offering
>     to pay for an Exhibition starter pack for local chapters. Local
>     chapters are also usually the coordinators of conferences and
>     related events, as mentioned above.
>
>     Exhibition starter packs almost never happen; OSGeo-Live
>     explicitlygets no support; and OSGeo struggles to staff a booth at
>     its own conferenceto say nothing of any other conferences.
>
>     Note: Local chapters certainly do do marketing and outreach, but
>     these efforts are essentially unsupported by the OSGeo Foundation.
>     In fact, this goal and the Board of Directors webpage seem to be
>     explicitly contradictory.
>
>     My grade: F.
>
>
>           Commentary
>
>     I could go on with my own personal evaluations, but I’m not sure
>     that’s necessary. The only place I see that OSGeo has unquestionably
>     succeeded in the past few years is the final goal, “To award the Sol
>     Katz award for service to the OSGeo community”.
>
>     So, what’s my point here? It’s simple: there is no longer a coherent
>     vision for what OSGeo should be. I’ll return to that below, but let
>     me continue with my other point.
>
>
>         OSGeo lacks leadership
>
>     Again quoting the Board of Directors’ page:
>
>     The board’s primary responsibility is to efficiently and effectively
>     make strategic decisions related to the running of OSGeo.
>
>     I won’t bore you with the details, but a perusal of the board
>     meeting minutes would indicate that strategyis rarely, if ever, a
>     part of the meetings.
>
>     The emphasis on consensus-based decision making often leads to no
>     decisions being made. I can’t count the number of discussions that
>     have come up on the board list only to devolve into a morass of
>     nit-picking and eventual lack of action when everyone tires of the
>     discussion. What action that is taken is often to “delegate” to a
>     (possibly inactive) sub-committee, then never follow up.
>
>     Instead what we have is a great deal of inertia, little interest in
>     changing things, and no clear indication of what the Board’s
>     priorities are.
>
>     If priorities do exist, they’re lost in a maze of confusing,
>     incomplete and often contradictory information on the wiki. (Wikis —
>     like abandonware for documentation.)
>
>
>         On pending irrelevancy
>
>     I encourage you to ask some random people in the open source
>     geospatial community what OSGeo means to them. I would make a bet
>     that the most common answer is a blank stare.
>
>     I would ask the board members to come up with three things, other
>     than FOSS4G, where the OSGeo membership has shown its importance to
>     the community as a wholein the last two years. Something where
>     people say, “Did you hear about[exciting thing]OSGeo is doing on X?”
>     To be clear, I don’t mean just things that OSGeo has a finger in,
>     but things that needOSGeo. If OSGeo disappeared tomorrow, would any
>     of these projects be significantly affected?
>
>     I don’t think it can be done. The OSGeo Foundation is sliding into
>     irrelevancy — and it may already be there.
>
>     If anything should be seen as strategic for OSGeo, it’s FOSS4G, the
>     foundation’s primary (sole?) source of income. Even regarding its
>     flagship public event, the board is largely absent. Rather than
>     provide adequate resources and planning, they instead rely on
>     burning out volunteers, then make post-hoc demands on the way they
>     shouldhave done it, provide no future support for organizers to heed
>     those demands, rarely follow up, then go on to repeat the same
>     mistakes the following year.  Honestly, it’s surprising that FOSS4G
>     has failed only once. (I think this is a reflection of the demand
>     for the conference, not the blazing competence of OSGeo.)
>
>     Michael Gerlek brought this up
>     <https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/discuss/2015-July/014521.html>on
>     the osgeo-discuss list in July, and probably has a more generous
>     spin on it. He essentially argues that it’s time to declare mission
>     accomplished and shut down or rebooted. I agree with his points, and
>     I’m arguing that OSGeo can have something to offer, but it will
>     require a major re-think of its mission.
>
>
>         Fixing things
>
>     I hinted at this in my recent questions to the board candidates, but
>     I want to be explicit here: OSGeo needs to evolve or die.
>
>     Here’s how I would do it:
>
>      1.
>
>         The board needs to evaluate all of its goals, as defined on the
>         About page, to decide if they are still truly goals. Define any
>         new goals.
>
>      2.
>
>         Ask the question: “What does it mean to succeed at this goal?”
>
>         If the goal is vague, or ongoing, give a timeline: “What does
>         success look like for this goal one year from now?”
>
>      3.
>
>         Create measureable objectives for achieving those goals. Ask the
>         question, “How will we know if we’ve succeeded?”
>
>      4.
>
>         Prioritize the goals.
>
>      5.
>
>         Allocate resources to the goals.
>
>         Obviously this is a tricky one, but I think we can look at this
>         a balance between Importance and Effort.
>
>
>         Spend money to reduce to the effort required, more money if the
>         goal is more important — this might be the hardest cultural
>         shift. Volunteer time is precious and easily discouraged. Make
>         sure that you make it as efficient as possible by spending money
>         when you can.
>
>
>         For example, many of the infrastructure services OSGeo provides
>         can be easily outsourced to more featureful services that are
>         more responsive and rely less on volunteer labor.
>
>      6.
>
>         Close the loop on tasks. When a task is delegated to a committee
>         or individual, track its progress, both to know that it is or
>         isn’t happening, and to be able to acknowledge and incorporate
>         the work when it’s done. Failing to acknowledge people’s labor
>         or to use the results of that labor will virtually guarantee
>         that the volunteer does not continue to help.
>
>      7.
>
>         Evaluate success and failure.  GOTO 1.
>
>     Aside: none if this will happen without a strong executive. Whether
>     that position is paid or not is up to the board, but it’s clear that
>     there needs to be someone who can make decisions without endless
>     rounds of fruitless discussions. The board as currently constituted
>     is not dysfunctional, but it is mostly afunctional.
>
>     I’m will go so far as to suggest this: Fly every board member who is
>     available to a two or three day retreat. Get everyone in the same
>     room, a professional facilitator to speed the process, then figure
>     out what OSGeo is going to be and how to get there. Don’t fret
>     excessively about the expense — this isn’t about saving money, it’s
>     about saving OSGeo.
>
>     If you ask me, irrelevancy is a fate worse than death. Be bold!It’s
>     better to try to do something big and new then fail than to simply
>     fade away and be forgotten.
>
>     Though my comments above may sound harsh, they are sent with the
>     very best of intentions. I want OSGeo to succeed, but OSGeo is never
>     going to succeed if it doesn’t know what it’s try to succeed
>     at.Without real reform, I don’t see success happening, just
>     irrelevance. Here’s hoping this gets the ball rolling.
>
>     Darrell
>
>