[OSGeo-Discuss] board members candidates manifestos please

[Jody Garnett]

Thanks Gert-Jan:

I had a number of other responsibilities this week that came ahead of
writing a manifesto, this is indicative of my priorities and time
management as a contributor. Group activities and group responsibilities
come first.

The most pressing responsibility has been keeping up our end of the
website/rebranding contract (you can see I have asked for some review on
this discussion list). , and following up on board commitments (trademarks,
chasing down prior action items, etc...).

It is my hope that my actions and email provides insight into my hopes for
our foundation. I will copy and paste one such email here as it touches on
ideas for OSGeo in general:

*I do not think the board was asked to reach a conclusion, the specific bug
report was the result of a mistake (made sure not to check who) and has
since been fixed: http://osgeo.getinteractive.nl/projects/qgis/
<http://osgeo.getinteractive.nl/projects/qgis/>*

*I will note that the website is still under active development by the
contractor, and that none of our community members had access to fix the
issue when it was reported - I am sorry if that made anyone feel like they
were not being listened to.*

*In terms of responsibility for website content:*

*- I feel that the project teams should have the final say on what appears
on these project pages (if they do not wish to provide "migrate from"
information then there is no requirement to).*
*- In a similar fashion committees, initiatives, goeforall labs should have
edit access and freedom to manage their respective pages.*
*- the board is responsible for the partner pages, as it maintains these
partner relationships*
*- the marketing committee has responsibility for a few sections, branding,
what is open source, and advocacy pages*

*With respect to the purpose of this website, the marketing committee was
asked by the board to take on this project to meet a couple of our goals as
an organization, that were being held up by our Drupal website (lack of
participation more than appearance). *

*- Outreach: To introduce members of the public to open source geospatial.
I view this as a calling for all of us in this organization (ie our
"Empower everyone with open source geospatial" mission statement) rather
than just the calling of the board, the local chapters, the marketing
committee, initiatives like GeoForAll and OSGeo, or the individual
projects.*
*- Celebration: To celebrate our community, especially its members (the
goal is written as "celebrate excellence, openness and service within the
OSGeo community"), which results in the strong focus on team photos in the
design and presentation (there is of course lots more we can do as an
organization - would love to see some more diverse awards and recognition).*

*What happened to the Drupal website? While there were limitations around
presentation (a rebranding done in 2009 was never implemented), the largest
one was around participation. The website committee became in active and
disbanded, and the individual committees and community activities gradually
migrated to the wiki. Indeed much day-to-day maintenance fell on Jeff
McKenna and his dedication and perseverance has kept us online. *

*The key message is that everyone is needed to both finish this website,
and to make it a success for everyone.*


The key theme, and one I agree with, is one of distributing work around our
organization. Steps were taken in 2017 to work on this, starting with
providing a clear budget to committees (including project committees). I
think it will take a couple years practice but i am confident that
providing committees a clear mandate, budget and trust is good way to
distribute work and responsibility, increase effectiveness, and avoid burn
out.

With respect to burn out, we have watched a succession of our leadership
extend themselves too far. I am particularly thankful for Venka stepping up
as president - and like the use of the vice-president role to share this
responsibility. Helena and Dirk have been effective in this capacity and
their contributions greatly appreciated.
--
Jody Garnett

On 11 October 2017 at 09:59, Gert-Jan van der Weijden - Stichting OSGeo.nl <
gert-jan at osgeo.nl> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
>
> As a charter member, one of my main duties is to vote for the new Board.
>
> In order to achieve this responsible task in a proper way, I do need to
> know the candidates personally
> But I DO need to know what they stand for, what their ideas are towards
> OSGeo in general, and their ideas about a role in the Board.
>
> We're almost halfway the campaign week, and until now only 2 (Vicky and
> Maria) out of 9 candidates supplied me on [1] with some information.
> That's far from enough to have a campaign, let alone to cast my vote.
>
>
> So, I'd like to invite Astrid, Venka, Jody, Sanghee, Helena, Dirk and Jeff
> to write down their manifestos on [1].
> Even if it's just copying and pasting from previous years, although I
> hardly can imagine that the development in the past 12 months (especially
> on the marketing aspect) isn't influencing your actual point of view on our
> organization.
>
>
>
> Kind regards from a "willing-to-vote-member" in the Lowlands,
>
>
> Gert-Jan
>
>
>
>
> [1] https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Election_2017_Candidate_Manifestos
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss at lists.osgeo.org
> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
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