[OSGeo-Discuss] Board Geographic Diversity

[Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo)]

On 11-Aug-07, at 7:51 AM, P Kishor wrote:
> On 8/10/07, Steve Lime <Steve.Lime at dnr.state.mn.us> wrote:
>> Hi all: Perhaps this has been discussed before, but... Given the  
>> apparent desire to maintain geographic diversity amongst OSgeo  
>> leadership perhaps in the future we might consider regionally  
>> based board seats.
>
> This is absolutely the most wonderful, workable, and simplest idea to
> this problem.

I'm not convinced that enforced geographic distribution at the board  
level is the best, though I acknowledge the value of the diversity  
and the need to make the organisation sensitive to particular  
geographic needs.

Implementing a geographically diverse board may be truly hard and is  
quite arbitrary.  I believe local chapters would need to develop  
further first, so they would provide the nominees or choose who would  
represent them on a board.  However, it pre-supposes that there are  
leaders available in all regions, that they are the best (however you  
define that) to lead the organisation and that those leaders are even  
involved in a local chapter.  Will this always be the case?  It's  
pretty hard to say...

Distributed geographic representation sounds good to us because we  
know geography is important - but it is still as arbitrary as saying  
we need equal representation from business vs. academia, or  
programmers vs. hobbyists, or distribution of languages, etc.

Instead, I would suggest something like an international congress  
that is made up of the chair of each local chapter, plus the main  
board.  It would be the OSGeo UN and meet several times per year,  
with decisions guiding final board decisions.  It would be an ideal  
way of having interaction between local chapters and the main  
organisation that might not otherwise happen.  This allows more  
people to become known and their leadership potential recognised more  
broadly.  It would be natural to that some members of the congress  
would end up running for board positions in the future.

This is just some rough brainstorming, please don't take it too  
seriously, but thought I'd share some of my personal reflections on  
the topic.

Tyler