[Board] UN Meeting

[Marc Vloemans]

Suggestion regarding the upcoming Board discussion on governance; committee affairs to be decided by lists seems an impractical and demotivating affair.

Committee members are those that do the actual work, whereas lists with all interested in the committee work should be for more general purposes (e.g. Info Dissemination and soliciting info/advice/help).
When committee members are hindered in their activities by inactive lists members, after a while committees experience demotivation and members leave or become inactive.

It all boils down to appropriate leadership; is community management a matter of enabling or directing the members?
Procedures giving 'lists' freedom to act/vote without responsibility (doing the work) seems counter to what I believed OSGeo stood for.
Which leaves committees two choices: do as told or do without telling. Either way, bad for our culture.

I trust all involved realise OSGeo is at a critical junction. Either we change and plan/prepare for a durable viable future that involves all stakeholders or we waste our valuable money and scarce volunteer time towards irrelevance. 

Wishing you wisdom and courage.

Kind regards,
Marc Vloemans


> Op 11 okt. 2016 om 08:26 heeft Maria Antonia Brovelli <maria.brovelli at polimi.it> het volgende geschreven:
> 
> For completeness, the main point under discussion was the one related to voting procedures.
> 
> "Everyday topics will be decided upon by an open vote of all list participants in a clearly designated separate mail thread (+1/-1) over a minimum of two business days with a minimum participation of 3 votes. Ideally we aim for consensus falling back on simple majority vote where necessary. The result will be clearly declared afterwards (or whatever is decided)."
> I believed (and still believe) that for important decisions as those of the CC, we need more participation in voting, i.e. a quorum of 50 %.
> As far as I have understood there is a handful of such decisions a year.
> After a long discussion about this topic, what was suggested by many volunteers (of the CC or not of the CC) is that the governance has to be decided by the Board and the CC decides only on the Conferences.
> Here we are: we will discuss this topic in next Board meeting.
> 
> 
> An for precision: when we made this discussion and I proposed to put the decision of governance in the hand of the Board, I was not in  the Board. 
> 
> 
> Lovely day.
> 
> Maria
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------
> Prof. Maria Antonia Brovelli
> Vice Rector for Como Campus and GIS Professor
> Politecnico di Milano
> 
> ISPRS WG IV/4"Collaborative crowdsourced cloud mapping (C3M)"; OSGeo; ICA-OSGeo-ISPRS Advisory Board; NASA WorldWind Europa Challenge; SIFET 
> Sol Katz Award 2015
>  
> Via Natta, 12/14 - 22100 COMO (ITALY)
> Tel. +39-031-3327336 - Mob. +39-328-0023867 - fax. +39-031-3327321
> e-mail1: maria.brovelli at polimi.it
> e-mail2: prorettrice at como.polimi.it
> 
> 
> 
>  
> 
> 
> Da: Board <board-bounces at lists.osgeo.org> per conto di Cameron Shorter <cameron.shorter at gmail.com>
> Inviato: lunedì 10 ottobre 2016 22.38
> A: Anita Graser; board at lists.osgeo.org
> Oggetto: Re: [Board] UN Meeting
>  
> 
> 
> On 11/10/2016 4:53 AM, Anita Graser wrote:
> > The board micro-managed the conference com? (I'm asking because I 
> > have not read the entire thread on the conf mailing list.) Any way, 
> > lets try not to repeat this process with the UNCom.
> Hi Anita,
> I suggest read the thread embedded into my last email I've just CCed to 
> the board.
> It doesn't include everything, but does include enough that you should 
> get an idea.
> 
> The quick summary:
> * After a conference committee face-to-face meeting at FOSS4G, Steven 
> took on an action to clarify conference committee procedures.
> * He did this, put it out for comment, actioned feedback, then put to 
> the proposal to vote
> * He received positive feedback from majority of the conference 
> committee, and two -1 vetos from Venka and Maria (who are also on the 
> board).
> * This resulted in 120+ emails, and a stalemate.
> * Maria has suggested to solve the problem of voting rules by putting on 
> the board agenda. (Hence the implication of being micro-managed by the 
> board)
> 
> -- 
> Cameron Shorter
> M +61 419 142 254
> 
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