[FOSS4G-Oceania] Governance

Thu Nov 29 16:35:33 PST 2018

Great points and follows on from my previous email. I think the uncertainty in the OSM world at the moment reinforces is in this region taking charge so to speak.

I argue the the annual conference would be the centre piece of the proposed entity and that moving forward it needs to be kept ‘in house’. But of course this will only work if we can keep a motivated group of people together.

Jonah and I spent some time this week talking a vast range of people in Fiji and there was a real excitement of a regional FOSS4G and OSM organisation. There is even talk of having a conference in the region at some point in the future. I really believe that the proposed entity has a great future ahead.

As previously argued I am not in favour of a ‘branch’ of an existing organisation (but I am in favour of strong partnerships with existing organisations). This would dilute our message.

My flight boards in 20 min so last email for a day or so....

Have a great meeting and weekend!

Greg

> On 30 Nov 2018, at 12:56, Martin Tomko <tomkom at unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> 
> I support the organisation, and would like to keep it lean.
>  
> I am just going to throw in a few valid concerns to address:
>  
> I would love to have OSGEO + OSM communities together, as per the German model
> For OSGEO/FOSS folks, this is a less organised, more diverse group than OSM contributors, but also likely less sensitive to some interventions. I would tread carefully -> see what happened to the OSM community after the change of licence -  in Australia this was brutal and not well received. Similar tensions arise now with the increasing commercialisation of the DB and the role of commercial entities. This is a sensitive community, and very diverse (From HOT to commercial interests)
> Lean is good. Some practices in other conference series have two types of committees: Steering committee for the series ( with some rolling membership, let’s say, of past present and future chairs, and an organisation committee in charge of the particular current (with a possible representation of an observer of the next future conference). This allows to manage continuity, a strategy, passing over best practices and finances, etc. http://dna.fernuni-hagen.de/SSTD/regulations.html is an example.
> Some alternatives that also come to mind is to have a “branch” under one of the existing spatial organisations. I would probably be -1 on this, but just flagging it here. I note that I have never seen a larger proportion of professional organisations to active members in any discipline anywhere in the world than spatial in Aus ☺. I have also experienced bad results when an existing, large professional organisation took over an independent conference series. In spatial, this is unfortunately the case of the famous Spatial Data Handling conference that was taken over by I believe IGU/ICA, and a few others. The quality went down, the number of people involved in organisation and prizes up, and the community broke down. Arguably, the ISPRS and FIG congresses have a much lesser dynamic to it than a FOSS4G type conference.
> Martin
>  
>  
>  
> From: FOSS4G-Oceania <foss4g-oceania-bounces at lists.osgeo.org> on behalf of Alex Leith <alexgleith at gmail.com>
> Date: Friday, 30 November 2018 at 8:48 am
> To: adam steer <adam.d.steer at gmail.com>
> Cc: foss4g-oceania <foss4g-oceania at lists.osgeo.org>
> Subject: Re: [FOSS4G-Oceania] Governance
>  
> Hey Folks
>  
> Sounds like there's no downside to starting an org, aside from the whole matter of responsibility for running it!
>  
> Regarding naming, I like OSGeo Oceania.
>  
> I'm tempted by something like "Yearnings for Open Location Oceania" or YOLO for short :-). More seriously, maybe "Open Location Organisation Oceania", which we can shorten to OLO2, which is kind of cool, as we're providing oxygen to open location.
>  
> Cheers,
>  
> On Thu, 29 Nov 2018 at 23:35 adam steer <adam.d.steer at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all, great discussion and thanks John/Daniel for starting a governance document.
>  
> re. incorporating an association - Greg/Daniel mainly: any difficulties forseeable with international currency movement? ie for wellington 2019? I suppose we can follow OSGeo and charge for things in a dominant regional currency.
>  
> naming: yeah tricky. OSGeo Oceania seems allright to me, but I’m biased and lazy. I’d like to keep the OSM folks involved, a few talks at the event were perfect for bringing less technical folk along for the ride - so it’d be fantastic to have that connection/window open into different worlds.
>  
> Also trying to cast 10 years into the future and see what’s going to be relevant, I still can’t come up with any better idea (see bias). I’m sure we can find sustaining local sponsors to cover costs; and conferences will be the primary means of income…
>  
>  
>  
>  
> On Thu, 29 Nov 2018 at 23:04, Greg Lauer <gregory.lauer at gmail.com> wrote:
> I support Daniels comments. Setting up an entity is similar in each state. I have done this in QLD and NZ. I think an entity is the way to progress.
>  
> I am on a plane at 12pm (finally going home) so will miss the meeting
>  
> Greg
>  
> On Thu, Nov 29, 2018 at 5:35 PM Daniel Silk <dwsilk at gmail.com> wrote:
> If for example, incorporating in Victoria: https://www.consumer.vic.gov.au/clubs-and-fundraising/incorporated-associations/become-an-incorporated-association/register-as-an-incorporated-association
>  
> The requirements are:
> 1. At least 5 members
> 2. Non-profit
> 3. We have a name (the hard part!)
> 4. We have rules (a constitution)
> 5. We have a purpose
> 6. We hold a meeting (with 21 days advance notice required) and vote to incorporate
>  
> Later:
> 7. We must have an AGM within 18 months of incorporation and then within 5 months of the end of every financial year at which a financial report is tabled and signed off by at least two members
> 8. We must maintain a list of members including each members name, address and date they became a member
>  
> Seems like that's about it.
>  
> Note that the incorporated associations material for Victoria refers to a "committee", not a "board".
>  
> ------
>  
> In regards to governance then, here is my proposal.
>  
> For simplicity, let's incorporate as "OSGeo Oceania" but with a clear purpose statement that supports not just open source geospatial software, but open geospatial data as well. If we are an incorporated association and name one committee member as the primary contact point with the OSM Foundation, then we satisfy all requirements to apply to be an OSMF local chapter.
>  
> This is similar to FOSSGIS in Germany which is also the local chapter for both OSGeo and OSMF. The Belgian and Italian OSMF local chapters are also organisations that are the local chapters for multiple international organisations.
>  
> I realise that this may be seen as diluting the importance of the OSM aspect and am happy to be challenged on this. I think it is very important that we continue to work together and I really enjoyed that we had strong open source geospatial, open data and OpenStreetMap aspects to our inaugural conference. I do think that it is hard to come up with a name that cohesively brings all of that together. It would be great to continue to work on that snappier name for next years conference. For the association  though, the purpose statement is much more important than the name. OSGeo has already shown that it is keen to support OpenStreetMap so I think we can achieve our broader goals under "OSGeo Oceania".
>  
> Cheers
> Daniel
>  
>  
> On Thu, Nov 29, 2018 at 7:36 PM Alex Leith <alexgleith at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi John and others
>  
> I'm not clear yet what the minimum we can do is, in terms of a legal entity. Do others have experience here? I had a quick read here, but determined that I need an adult to help me with the choices!
>  
> I have served on the board of SSSI, and understand the structures of that organisation, which is a not-for-profit in Australia, and there's a fair bit of governance and documentation. I think the minimum if we had an organisation like that would be a constitution and a board + the conference organising committee for each year.
>  
> I think that creating an entity would be a great thing to achieve, and we certainly have the core to start with, with our enthusiastic committee and successful event. I'm a little hesitant, though, as I see that we can make it work without one... we have a lot of avenues for support, in terms of juggling finances and contractual agreements. SSSI, SIBA, Locate, LINZ, etc...
>  
> One more comment about the draft document is that I think limiting committees to those that are absolutely essential is important. So if the legal entity needs a board, we have a board, and a conference committee. If it just needs an annual meeting, we have an annual meeting and a conference committee! My $0.02.
>  
> Cheers,
>  
> Alex
>  
> On Thu, 29 Nov 2018 at 16:12 John Bryant <johnwbryant at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi committee, time for the most exciting topic of all - governance!
>  
> Over the last several months, and especially last week, there were a number of conversations among committee members about 'what next', and many of these have touched on the topic of how we organise this committee in the future.
>  
> I expect there will be quite a few ideas around this, and a range of opinions, so I'd like to kick off a discussion so that we can choose our path and move forward.
>  
> We've had a productive year of working together, culminating in a successful event. We managed to do this quite informally, using consensus building to foster a shared sense of ownership of the conference. I'm extremely happy with how this group has worked together.
>  
> I feel we are at an inflection point though, and I don't think we can assume that what worked this year will automatically continue to work. Now that we have people's attention with a successful event and an energised & engaged community, I feel it would be wise to come to more robust terms on how we manage this. 
>  
> Because we need to kick off a new conference planning cycle in the new year, we also need to determine how to bring in new people (importantly, including some New Zealanders), how to appoint a new chair, etc etc.
>  
> At a bare minimum, I believe our next iteration of governance should include an updated Terms of Reference, outlining processes for managing committee membership, processes for appointing leadership and executive, rules/norms for decision making, and expectations around levels of participation.
>  
> But there are good arguments to be made for creating a legally-recognised entity:
> it would enable us to manage our own funds when the time is right (whether we choose to do this immediately or not)
> it would enable us to enter into agreements as a body (Alex and I had to personally sign our partnership agreement with SSSI, as individuals)
> it normally comes with a well-developed set of rules for governance that we can adjust to our liking
> I believe that committee members would be somewhat protected from personal liability
> it would provide a strong signal to the community that there is a persistent body in place to steward the conference and other initiatives, and ideally lay out a strong foundation for the long term
> I have definitely heard people warn against the administrative overhead of setting up a formal entity, but having done this in the past (in Canada mind you), and reading through the docs, I don't see this as especially onerous. But there is more work to do on understanding the details.
>  
> In any case, we need to figure out how to move on to the next phase. In terms of timing, I think we should try and come to agreement on a clear path forward within about 2 weeks (14th Dec), so that we can begin the new year with purpose and direction.
>  
> Daniel and I had a good chat about this stuff this morning, and have started a draft document we can use (in addition to this email thread) to focus our efforts.
>  
> Your thoughts/questions/ideas/concerns please!
>  
> Cheers
> John
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> Dr. Adam Steer
> http://spatialised.net
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