[OSGeo-Discuss] End the vote!

[Jeff McKenna]

Hi Adrian,

At last week's Board meeting, Board members chose 30 as the number of
Charter Members that will be added in this election process (minutes at
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Board_Meeting_2013-07-11).

Importantly though, I agree with you, this crop of nominations for
Charter Members is just outstanding, so spread out geographically, and
so full of passionate people.

The CROs are working hard this year managing the election process,
working within the guidelines set by the Board; however I agree, nothing
says that we cannot/should not/ improve this Charter Member process for
the 2014 election.

Arnulf has setup a page to collect everyone's ideas for changes in the
process: please do add your ideas at
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Category_talk:Elections

I would also like to see Charter members be given more of a role in the
organization.  For example, one could imagine the Charter members voting
on future FOSS4G bids.  I'm very open to hearing your thoughts and
working with you closely to improve the process.

As always, great email from you Adrian, I really appreciate it.

-jeff




On 2013-07-15 11:58 AM, Adrian Custer wrote:
> Hey all 'charter' members,
> 
> You have nominated a large number of great, passionate creators,
> educators, community builders, and users of free geospatial software to
> become new 'charter' members of OSGeo.
> 
> 
> Now, unfortunately, your existing system of voting means that you will
> either
>     (1) vote to accept some nominees but not others, or
>     (2) bypass the voting process and accept everyone as was
>         done last year.
> The former sucks since its only effect will now be to 'exclude' or
> 'reject' people who are passionate and respected enough to have been
> nominated. In other words, up to now all has been positive, building
> respect and support but, now, the only outcome of *voting* is rejection
> and possibly discouragement of those same people. That seems silly.
> 
> So, after this process, you might consider changing things. You might
> examine the consequences of voting by examining how you feel yourselves
> after voting especially about those you did not vote for or by looking
> at who did not get 'voted' in to see if that was because they were not
> great candidates or due to some regional effect. You might then consider
> changing the 'vote' to some other system, such as a system where anyone
> getting x number of 'nominations' gets in. (Of course, that still has
> all the problems that passionate folk on the periphery who are not known
> to enough people in the core might not become 'charter' members but
> that's a design flaw inherent in this club like, two tier member system.)
> 
> Voting is not the only way of organizing communities. This vote does not
> seem to help the OSGeo in its mission. You can do better.
> 
> cheers,
>   ~adrian
> 
>