[OSGeo-Conf] Motion: Membership in CC

[Eli Adam]

Hi all,

I've never thought that committee membership is needed to make
productive contributions to the committee and work.  Many non-members
have over the years made significant contributions and I value those.
This is also a great way to get voted onto the committee.  If you show
up and productively contribute and do work for some duration of time,
then someone is likely to make a motion for you to get added to the
committee.

I personally am in favor of default timing out after a duration and
will probably be taking that route myself.  I'll stay on the email
list, productively contribute where and when I can, but I'll be free
of the obligation to carefully read each bid document.  There are some
long-time committee members who continue to make occasional but
critically important contributions.  I like those contributions and
find them useful.  I'm not sure all people would still do that if not
voting.  I generally value participation and useful contributions over
inactivity and on most committees would favor leaving inactive people
as members until such time that they choose to leave or become active
again.  The nature of the conference committee runs somewhat counter
to that so in this case, I support an effort to remove inactive
members.  (You could consider our unreasonable quorum requirements as
the problem instead of the inactivity.)

Watching the committee over the last several years, our numbers (or
differing approaches to how a committee operates, or the combination
of those) has become somewhat unwieldy.  This leaves me slightly more
in favor of planned exits from the committee.

I'm also really excited to see the contributions of new members taking
over.  This is what the committee really needs too!  There is a lot of
work on this committee.  The international FOSS4G conference is a
major undertaking.  Every year I'm excited to vote in the FOSS4G
chair(s) onto the conference committee.  The conference committee has
also originated a lot of related items, the code of conduct, the TGP,
etc.  All of those took major efforts.  The TGP continues to take a
staggering amount of work such that I'm unwilling to even entertain
the thought of leading it (thanks to those who do).  I make some minor
contributions on the TGP workload but it barely makes a difference.
We may need a new approach to the TGP since there is such a gap
between demand and resources that the amount of work to sort it all is
ridiculous.

A note on motions: discussion is needed before voting if it is going
to be a complicated topic with various views.  100s of hours have
already been spent discussing committee membership with not very
satisfactory results.  Partly we are where we are because we failed to
come up with anything better.  Till, would you consider retracting
this motion?  It neither passes or fails, it is just no longer under
consideration.

I'm slightly opposed to this motion but don't know that we are going
to put in the time to come up with something workable that everyone
agrees on.  I'm also somewhat opposed to our high quorum number
requirements.  I partly support Steven's suggestion to use our
existing process.  Partly, I hope that new people organically take on
the work that needs to be done and people previously doing the work
organically dissipate away and resign after a time.  Right now Till
and Steven do 75% of the work.  I'd like to see other people take on
those duties so that either or both of them are free to leave and it
won't impact things.

Best regards, Eli


On Wed, Sep 12, 2018 at 1:29 PM, Steven Feldman <shfeldman at gmail.com> wrote:
> I favour a time out after say 3/4 years, or on some other basis, with the
> option to stand for re-election if a member wishes to continue on committee
>
> Regards
> Steven
>
>
> +44 (0) 7958 924101
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On 12 Sep 2018, at 21:26, Guido Stein <gstein at appgeo.com> wrote:
>
> Folks,
>
> To Stevens point about thinning the committee members to make sure that we
> can get quorum:
>
> I agree that the committee should be made up of people who are active. I
> know that many of the past chairs have been interested and supportive of the
> process and that some have gotten too busy or moved on from this community.
> I think it's would help to setup some rule about participation to help
> determine who is on the committee.
>
> If for example a committee member has been absent from a vote more than 3
> years, they probably don't have any interest in voting in the next year. It
> would make sense to remove them from the committee.
>
> Would people be willing to set a activity flag for removing inactive
> committee members?
>
> -Guido
>
> On Wed, Sep 12, 2018 at 5:56 AM Steven Feldman <shfeldman at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I would like to publicly oppose the proposal (oppose not veto). I wish to
>> stress that my opposition to the proposal does not in any way signify an
>> objection to Gerard per se, it is a concern about the membership criteria of
>> the Conference Committee.
>>
>> The Conference Committee (as opposed to the mailing list which is open to
>> everyone) has, until recently, had only one task - to run the process to
>> select the team to run the Global FOSS4G event. The open list can review the
>> LoI’s and ask questions of the bidders but voting is restricted to CC
>> members. In the last 2 years the CC has also been entrusted with running the
>> FOSS4G Travel Grant Programme.
>>
>> I believe that the CC has grown too large and that without a process to
>> retire members (I believe we have a mechanism in the current terms of
>> reference which could/should be activated before this motion is considered)
>> we are in danger of failing to have a quorum for decisions.
>>
>> In the 2019 selection process last year we failed to reach a quorum of
>> >50% in the final vote and the CRO had to request the chair of CC to
>> encourage additional members to vote. CC is now larger than 2017 and there
>> is a proposal to vote on accepting another member, theoretically anyone
>> could propose further regional chairs or any other person to be appointed to
>> CC, this is not sustainable in my opinion. Membership of CC should not be an
>> honour that is bestowed upon former chairs of regional events (Charter
>> Membership is our way of honouring people who have made a strong
>> contribution to our community).
>>
>> CC’s principal task is running the global FOSS4G selection, I believe that
>> the membership should have experience of running a global FOSS4G. This does
>> not prevent other interested people from expressing opinions or asking
>> questions on the list it just reserves the most important financial decision
>> that OSGeo makes each year (OSGeo offer financial guarantees and loans of up
>> to $80k to a FOSS4G LOC) to people who have experience of running previous
>> events with budgets of ca $500k. The invitation of past chairs of global
>> FOSS4G to join the CC ensures that we retain our communal knowledge,
>> experience and judgement.
>>
>> I previously proposed that we reduce the size of CC to 11 members and have
>> a mandatory retirement and re-election process. That proposal gained a lot
>> of support but was vetoed, I will not propose it again but I do ask CC
>> members to suggest an alternative way forward that will not lead to an ever
>> growing CC, a dilution of expertise and further potential inquorate votes.
>>
>> BTW if others want to be more involved in CC activities, the TGP team
>> struggled to get volunteers to run the Dar TGP or to assist on regional
>> events. We need volunteers, the TGP work is quite time consuming and the
>> burden currently falls on 2 or 3 people. You do not need to be a member of
>> CC to participate in the TGP.
>> ______
>> Steven
>>
>>
>> > On 12 Sep 2018, at 07:59, Till Adams <till.adams at fossgis.de> wrote:
>> >
>> > Dear ConfComm,
>> >
>> > last topic today: Membership in CC.
>> >
>> > Past chairs of a global conference are automatically asked to become
>> > members of CC. If they agree, they are proposed as new members to CC and
>> > voted. If there are proposals for other, non-former-global chair people
>> > as new members, please propose them on the list after the global
>> > conference is over and prior to the RfP for the next FOSS4G (maybe this
>> > year we make an exception and extend this phase until the end of
>> > September).
>> >
>> > There has also been some discussion on the election procedure. I would
>> > propose the following procedure:
>> >
>> > We are currently 19 members. If a candidate receives at least 10 "+1"
>> > votes on the mailing list within 7 days after being proposed, the
>> > candidate will be accepted as a new member. With this procedure you can
>> > actively vote *for* a candidate, but you don't have to actively vote
>> > *against* someone.  Of course, the right of a veto ("-1") is retained,
>> > but, as always, a "-1" must be justified and if possible, an alternative
>> > proposal must be given. If this does not happen, the veto will be
>> > ignored.
>> >
>> > Regarding the election procedure, I have the following proposal: If you
>> > want to vote publicly, you can do so just by sending an email to this
>> > list. Alternatively, in case of a proposed candidate, I will name 2
>> > election assistants, to whom a vote can be sent by e-mail. At the end of
>> > the election period we receive only the number of the "+1" votes without
>> > names of the voters from them.
>> >
>> > Vetoes must be publicly justified.
>> >
>> >
>> > Please vote on ths proposal until 19th of September, if we agree in this
>> > procedure, I can do the changes in the WIKI [1].
>> >
>> >
>> > Till
>> >
>> >
>> > [1] https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Conference_Committee#Current_Members
>> >
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>>
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