[Oceania-Board] Pre-election: OSGeo Oceania Membership Working Group

[Edoardo Neerhut]

Dear MWG & OSGeo Board,

Tl;dr: Election coming and MWG is inefficient. Read on to help make it
better.

I want to provide an update on the Membership Working Group (MWG) and
also discuss how we fulfil our obligations to the OSGeo Oceania
community better. This is particularly important with the lead up to the
election.

Once we have clarified a few things here, it seems appropriate that
these conversations move to the public Oceania mailing list. I'd like to
do this ASAP once people have had a chance to chime in.

Membership
Update
Prospective members pending a decision: 26
Membership applications approved: 100
Membership applications rejected: 1

The only person rejected thus far was outside Oceania and had no
engagement with the region to date. I think this will be the main reason
people fail to meet the eligibility requirements and get rejected.

The election
I have heard mixed things about whether a new member will be able to
vote in the 2020 election. Can I get clarity on this?

The MWG
The MWG currently comprises of myself, Emma Hain, David Garcia, and
Daniel Silk. Adam Steer was on the MWG as well, but had to step down due
to other commitments and his move to Norway. One of the criteria in the
Membership Policy is that at least two board members take part in the
MWG. Emma and Daniel currently fill this role. We will need to review
participation following the board election to make sure we still meet
this requirement.

I would like to invite members to take part in the MWG after the
election to get new people involved with OSGeo Oceania.

Review process for membership applications
The current process requires each member of the MWG to make a decision
on the application before we can finalise the application status. This
can introduce significant delay as one vote can stop the approval from
going ahead. As it stands, I think we are failing to live up to our
Membership Policy
<https://drive.google.com/file/d/1juJafdp8zfIprkA6eDDSFEMwOANQRI93/edit>
"it should be easy to join". I see two solutions to this:

1. I could try to chase people up more regularly to get a decision.
2. We could set the membership approval requirement to 2 people of the
MWG as long as no objections have been raised over a 2 week period. This
gives members of the MWG chance to review the application and raise
objections, whilst also ensuring decisions come through in a timely
manner.

I am in favour of 2, as I think 1 can be challenging in a volunteer
organisation.

Membership register
Once a member has been approved, they should be added to this register
<https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Oceania_Membership>. I will update this
register with the new intake as soon as the current pending decisions
determined. 

We collect and store address information as required by The Corporations
Act 2001 for a membership register. This is only accessible to the board
and the MWG. The public register linked above only contains the name and
country.

Let me know if you have any thinking on the register.

Kind regards,

Ed
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