[OSGeo-Conf] some decisions in the pipe

[Steven Feldman]

1) Over a year ago we tried to agree procedures to manage the size of the committee, the adoption of new members, quorums etc. That generated a lot of heat and subsequently we adopted the process/rules that are in the wiki at https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Conference_Committee#Decisions <https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Conference_Committee#Decisions> and https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Conference_Committee#Membership <https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Conference_Committee#Membership>

The main (or only) role that is reserved for Committee Members is the selection of the Team/Location for the annual FOSS4G all other discussion and activities e.g. wiki maintenance, maintaining/updating the RfP docs and process, organising the Travel Grant Programme (anything else?) are open to anyone who participates on the Conerence_Dev list. 
I suggest that we do need to keep the number of Committee Members to a manageable number to ensure that we get a quorum from the active members (we initially failed to have a quorum for the LoI phase this year) and were quite light for the final phase
The selection of the global FOSS4G is the most significant (and risky) decision that OSGeo takes each year. The surpluses are the principal source of funding for the foundation and when we offer a guarantee and seed funding to an LOC there is potential for substantial exposure for OSGeo. To me it makes sense that this selection is made by people who have relatively recent experience of running a FOSS4G and the challenges and finances involved. I agree with those who have said that even a large regional event is not comparable.
For these reasons I have voted in another thread to support Guido and Michael and mildly against (but not vetoing) Gerard

2) I thought the thumbs up/down process for selecting LoIs worked well it allows all of the good proposals to go to the next stage while allowing us to reject a proposal that fails to impress more than half the voting members

3) I am in favour of mandating a standard response format for the full proposals (much as many of us who tend for public sector contracts have grown used to)

May the FOSS be with you
______
Steven


> On 23 Jan 2018, at 11:33, Till Adams <till.adams at fossgis.de> wrote:
> 
> Hi Conference comittee,
> 
> this is a general reminder on some decisions/discussions, that I have on
> my list we have to talk about in the following weeks. This email serves
> just as a general list-up with the hope, that you'll find some time to
> think about some of my issues. If you have your own things to bring in,
> feel free to share!
> 
> I will list these points as seperate issues below and would be happy if
> we start a discussion:
> 
> 1. Voting Members
> 
> For the last RfP, where we nominated Bucharest as venue for the 2019
> conference, we had a weak quorum, because quite some members did not
> vote. I sent out personal emails to the non-voters and received feedback
> from 3 of the 5 non-voters. These 3 excused themselves, they had reasons
> and they are willing to stay on board and that makes me happy.
> 
> Leads me to the question, that I still did not get any feedback from the
> other 2. Now it's already some weeks ago that I contacted them,
> including a remembering mail.
> I don't know if we have an official trial to rule out people and
> personnally I wouldn't like to do that, because I know at least one of
> the 2 personally.
> On the other side, we can't be sure, that they will appear back once
> upon a time. Not re-appearing means that we have to fear more weak
> quorums in the future.
> 
> Issue 1: How do we act here?
> 
> This directly leads me to question 2: I will nominate Guido Stein and
> Michael Terner as new members for the CC later. I think as former chairs
> of a successful global FOSS4G conference, it is without question clear,
> that we need them as new members in CC. Also there was a request of
> Gerald Fenoy back this summer, where he asked for participation as member.
> I am little unsure here, because I fear, that we will have a huge CC
> within a few years, when we also nominate all past chairs of regional
> events. In my eyes (without rating!!!) organizing a regional event is a
> cmletely different game than having a global FOSS4G. And our job is to
> vote on proposals for global conferences venues. On the other side, of
> course, having some more active members inside CC wouldn't be the badest
> idea.
> 
> Issue 2: Accept nomination of Gerald Fenoy (and potential other regional
> chairs?) ?
> 
> 
> 2. Voting process
> We discussed to alter the voting process, so that for step 1 (LOI
> acceptance) of the RfP 2019 we had this new "thumbs up"/"thumbs down"
> vote. I will soon call for a vote, whether we want to keep this
> procedure or go back to the old "one vote per member" also for step 1.
>  
> 
> 3. Bid process
> I do not know, how you felt in the last RfP. I had problems in comparing
> the two proposals, because one of them was very close to the draft we
> gave out and the Sevilla one was, let's say, "freely interpreted" ;-).
> I don't want to limit the teams' individual imagination, but perhaps it
> would be easier for comparing the proposals, if all proposals would have
> the same agenda. This also would save the teams from spending money on a
> marketing agency for layout things (I do not want to impute, that this
> happened in 2019, but this *might* happen in the future in order to put
> one proposal in a better light). I wil call for a vote on this issue
> soon as well.
> 
> 
> So far, have a nice day!
> 
> Till
> 
> 
> 
> 
>  
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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