[Board] effective committees, do-ocracy, metrit-ocracy, and veto votes

[Cameron Shorter]

I'm concerned that some OSGeo committees are squashing enthusiasm and 
reducing the effectiveness of our most vibrant OSGeo volunteers, by 
over-use of the "-1" veto vote.

OSGeo is a volunteer organisation. It works at its best as a 
"Merit-ocracy" and "Do-ocracy". This is where people with great ideas 
support and encourage the people who step up to do things.

In a healthy community, leaders will lend advice, and will either step 
up to work through an issue, or will defer to the opinion of the person 
doing the work.

Of late, I've observed volunteers doing a lot of hard work, then being 
vetoed by people in authority, with minimal hands-on support provided to 
the volunteer. This smells like a command-and-control management model, 
which doesn't work very well in a volunteer organisation.

I think with a few tweaks within our committees to our management 
mindset we can re-invigorate our volunteer enthusiasm.


-- 
Cameron Shorter
M +61 419 142 254