[FOSS4G-Oceania] FOSS4G SotM Oceania 2019 Committee Roles

Thu Mar 14 15:36:21 PDT 2019

Dear all,
Fantastic folks willing to chair/co-chair, very happy with that, but – I would like to see a greater involvement of the NZ crew, which then will be reflected in the format and content. I think this is the point of the conferences wandering around – there is some consistency, yet diversity.

In academia, there is often 2-4 program co-chairs ( this is program, not organisation), where 2 at least are local or new. Helps to bring new blood into the fold. It may be good to have more program co-chairs then ( possibly with allocated responsibilities, such as lightning talks, academic track, etc).

Thanks,
Martin

From: FOSS4G-Oceania <foss4g-oceania-bounces at lists.osgeo.org> on behalf of Alex Leith <alexgleith at gmail.com>
Date: Friday, 15 March 2019 at 9:07 am
To: adam steer <adam.d.steer at gmail.com>
Cc: foss4g-oceania <foss4g-oceania at lists.osgeo.org>, Emma Hain <emmahain at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [FOSS4G-Oceania] FOSS4G SotM Oceania 2019 Committee Roles

Oh, I'm happy not to chair and also happy not to co-chair!

I don't think we should really have formalities around co-chairs... the whole point of the chair is having an individual take responsibility and ownership of a task.

So consider my offer to be one of support!

On Fri, 15 Mar 2019 at 09:04 adam steer <adam.d.steer at gmail.com<mailto:adam.d.steer at gmail.com>> wrote:
hey all

Emma Hain also expressed interest in co-chairing (on both the gdrive doc and off-list) - perhaps I should have written that into the proposal! And Alex - of course your input is welcome and given the risks identified with my ‘chairdom’ I think you should also propose to chair.

to follow due process; if both Alex and Emma have a strong interest as committee co-chair, we should gather proposals and vote as a community.

we didn’t really define what should happen if there are multiple interests in co-chairing - I think we just assumed that a chair would handpick a team more or less undemocratically (which is also fine) - but I can be, and often am, wrong!

And I agree with Cameron. I’d hoped to express that I’d aim to develop the programme with input from everyone (including 2018’s successful model and feedback from it); and as chair, the key roles are herding the cats and picking up slack (with respect to the fact that everyone is a volunteer here, and everyone has busy other lives).

Cheers

On Fri, 15 Mar 2019 at 08:38, Alex Leith <alexgleith at gmail.com<mailto:alexgleith at gmail.com>> wrote:
Hey Cameron

Absolutely agree. From the do-ocracy that we have all experienced last year, to the principles of 'disagree and commit<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disagree_and_commit>' when decisions don't go one's way, I think that we know that we can make better decisions and get a lot done by working together.

Cheers,

On Fri, 15 Mar 2019 at 08:30 Cameron Shorter <cameron.shorter at gmail.com<mailto:cameron.shorter at gmail.com>> wrote:
Great to see people step up, and as I'm mentioned numerous times before, I'm super impressed with the quality of people in our team.

Some thoughts on the subtle differences between leaders/despots/managers.
Great leaders are really good at capturing the collective opinion of the team, helping each member in the team shine and reach their personal goals and potential. It often involves creating space for people to step up. It sometimes involves stepping back from an opinion you might have. It also involves stepping in and taking up the slack and doing the dirty work when no one steps up.

Adam, Alex, I see these characteristics in you both (as I do with the rest of the team), and expect you would make use of these principles?

On Fri, 15 Mar 2019 at 08:19, Alex Leith <alexgleith at gmail.com<mailto:alexgleith at gmail.com>> wrote:
Hey Adam

I'm happy to co-chair/sub-chair with you, if you take the Program Lead role on.

I've got some strong opinions about the format. I think what we did last year worked really well, aside from the panel session, which was good, but was the weakest link.

I think the key components of the program are:

  1.  Keynotes - we did well here last year, so let's try to do at least as good this year!
  2.  Program - Sessionize sounds like the way to go regarding logistics, and hopefully, again, we have a strong pool of talks to choose from.
  3.  Format - again, my opinion, but the format<https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tmqjTjK2w6qmbpGJo9_zZVkduPAYU4qTJm2x7K-TY7Q/edit> worked well last year. If we can work out how to make the panel session shine, that will round it off!
Also a note that Stephen Lead did an incredible job organising the lightning talks, and I'd suggest we approach him again for this year. He'll probably be ok to be involved from an earlier point too.

Cheers,

On Fri, 15 Mar 2019 at 08:11 adam steer <adam.d.steer at gmail.com<mailto:adam.d.steer at gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi Daniel

Apologies for a slow response, I’ve been turning this over a lot. ...and thanks Ed for the great example of what to write! I add one extra item - ‘risks’.

Role
I’ve self-nominated to chair the program committee

Why
I’m passionate about making OSGeo SotM Oceania different from ‘another industry/science meeting’. The 2018 event is a fantastic base to build on; and will be a hard act to follow. I don’t have any preset ideas about what a program should look like; aside from some loose concepts around embracing the whole community as much as possible, open-mindedness, raising new voices, trying to avoid default options where we can, being open to how the world changes between last time and now; and keeping that heady mix of technical excellence and community-mindedness bubbling away!

The programme committee also has a great set of resources (including everyone reading this right now) to help figure out what will work and what won’t; as well as seeing what boundaries we can push to engage people in new ways (if we need to).

My aim as chair is to more or less draw on all those resources; and do the legwork which helps other people shine. Help keep barriers to participation as low as possible, keep the programme committees life sane, and support the delivery of a conference that is a success - which in turn supports the main game: promoting, strengthening and building the open geospatial community in Oceania.

Responsibilities I’m uncertain about
From my view the responsibilities of the program chair seem pretty clear - one of which is to delegate as much as possible to, for example, the good mojo/community day team or the academic subcommittee (if one exists); and another of which is to gather as much support as possible for putting the actual program together. There are heaps of uncertainties about how it will all work right at this point, there is no clear idea of what a program might look like - we’ll work it out together!

Risks
I’m waiting to hear about a job move which would see me wind my OSGeo Oceania activities back a lot after about May 2019. I should know this week, but may not find out until later in the month. In the event that happens; I’ll work with the LOC to replace myself/hand over ASAP.

…or another move which would do the opposite and land me right in ground zero for 2019. So uncertainty abounds.

With that in mind it’d be awesome to have someone nominate themselves as committee co-chair; which there has been some out-of-list discussion about already. From what I saw in 2018 there’s definitely enough work to share around.

Cheers

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Dr. Adam Steer
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Alex Leith
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Dr. Adam Steer
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Alex Leith
0419 189 050
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