[OSGeo Oceania] Fwd: [Charter-members] 2020 OSGeo Board of Directors election results

Mon Dec 14 22:42:52 PST 2020

Well said John.

I personally have not seen much community engagement (until recently, that is) that would have justified increased participation by myself.

I also feel uncomfortable with the way Osgeo Oceania Community members are described and defined. That is why I personally have not bothered with applying to be a voting member.

I prefer a more open community, where anyone can subscribe and regard themselves as a ‘member’ of the community.

I don’t like the approach where anyone can send an email and request to become a ‘member’, which also means that they can vote in elections for the board.

I much prefer our parent organisation’s model, where people need to be nominated based on their positive contributions to the community, and then be accepted by charter member vote, prior to being eligible to vote for the board, or other Charter Members.

I believe that the current ‘member’ model adopted by OSGeo Oceania is driven more by ASIC requirements, and less by good open source community practices. The current model is ripe for misuse, abuse and the equivalent of branch stacking.

I recall that this has been discussed in the past, but in the light of recent discussions, I suggest that it may be beneficial for the community to revisit what it means to be an OO ‘member’.

Kind regards,

Bruce

, 
> On 15 Dec 2020, at 16:00, John Bryant <johnwbryant at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> My feeling is that voter participation is probably closely linked to general community engagement. If we set engagement as a priority for OSGeo Oceania, I think we'll see participation improve over time.
> 
> Some things I'd support, towards this end:
> Support local groups, local events, local initiatives. Articulate the parameters of a grant program, invite applications, and put the funds of the organisation to work.
> Continue to open up the organisation to more people, by making it easy for people to follow along and find out where they want to contribute. Commit to transparency, make board & working group meetings open-invitation wherever possible, write clear and simple terms of reference and keep them up to date, use open 2-way channels of communication.
> Andrew's suggestion for a gentle reminder that voting is required could help. I agree the comms were good.
> 
> Regarding removing people from the membership register: this idea was driven by our old constitution, which said we needed 20% of the members present at a General Meeting, which is very difficult if the member list is largely inactive. This year's AGM wouldn't have met quorum under those rules. When OO adopted the current constitution, this changed to "the lower of 20% of the Membership or 10 Members", easier to achieve, so it's less critical to keep the list from getting stale.
> 
> It still feels OK to me to use this method to trim the list when people become inactive, but I suggest doing it gently - ask members if they want to stay on, rather than just drop them.
> 
> Cheers
> John
> 
>> On Tue, 15 Dec 2020 at 12:36, Martin Tomko <tomkom at unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
>> One more comment – we could see how many people that registered used “company” emails.
>> 
>> If people change jobs, these may become not available, or at least not checked ( and you do not get a bounce email, sometimes).
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> Second, this is not a year to draw conclusion based on. People simply have no energy for most things, and if there was no conference, they may not have felt involved. We did not remind them that if they do not vote 2 years in a row they may become inactive…
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> So I would not be too harsh on ourselves. I also perceive the mothership OSGeo differently to our local org. They are for me not primarily the community organising body ( = conference), but the one that coordinates and maintains the lives of the member software projects. Hence, there is a different level of activity and expectations, that do not get perceived as “dormant” in a year without a conference. Arguably, we do not have this second leg to stand on in OO.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> Martin
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> From: Oceania <oceania-bounces at lists.osgeo.org>
>> Date: Tuesday, 15 December 2020 at 3:28 pm
>> To: Alex Leith <alexgleith at gmail.com>
>> Cc: OSgeo - Oceania <oceania at lists.osgeo.org>
>> Subject: Re: [OSGeo Oceania] Fwd: [Charter-members] 2020 OSGeo Board of Directors election results
>> 
>> Hi Alex,
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> Wow - I missed that in the AGM recording... I wonder if this is a hangover of the initial excitement of the OO org getting off the ground, in that people were signing up for a membership without understanding the requirements of having to vote in the elections?
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> I think you mentioned in a previous email that the membership clause states something along the lines of members who do not participate in two consecutive elections are deemed to be inactive and are removed from the membership register. Maybe now that we have had two elections, that process will kick in and improve the completion rate by removing inactive members? Because I would hope that more than 40% of the membership is active.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> For what it is worth I thought the communication for this election was good, but maybe I just happened to be on the right channels. I do have two suggestions for increasing voter turnout, and a caveat here is I'm not sure how practical these are:
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> 1. A gentle reminder to those who did not vote that the membership comes with some expectations and one of those is that they participate in the OSGeo Oceania elections.
>> 
>> 2. I'm not sure if MailChimp can do this maybe next year we could send an appointment or calendar invite with a link to the voting page, thus creating a mechanism in people own calendars to be reminded?
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> Thanks
>> 
>> Andrew
>> 
>>  
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 11:51 AM Alex Leith <alexgleith at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Forwarding because we talked about the voter turnout at our AGM.
>> 
>> OSGeo has 64% participation, compared to our ~40%.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> Any ideas on how we can increase this? 
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> One difference is that to become a charter member of OSGeo, you need to be recommended, so more 'exclusive'!
>> 
>> ---------- Forwarded message ---------
>> From: Jorge Gustavo Rocha <jgr at osgeopt.pt>
>> Date: Tue, 15 Dec 2020 at 10:11
>> Subject: [Charter-members] 2020 OSGeo Board of Directors election results
>> To: OSGeo Charter members <charter-members at lists.osgeo.org>
>> Cc: Board <board at lists.osgeo.org>, OSGeo Chief Returning Officer <cro at osgeo.org>
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Dear OSGeo members and friends,
>> 
>> Thanks to all candidates for going through the election process and
>> thank you all for your participation in this election.
>> 
>> These are the results from the 2020 elections for the 4 open seats on
>> the OSGeo Board of Directors.
>> 
>> The results in alphabetical order are:
>> 
>> * Angelos Tzotsos
>> * Michael Smith
>> * Michele Tobias
>> * Tom Kralidis
>> 
>> Election figures are:
>> 
>> * 306 votes out of 482
>> * 63% participation
>> 
>> All candidates received a large number of votes recognizing their
>> engaged in our community.
>> 
>> Detailed number of votes for each candidate were published on the OSGeo
>> wiki [1].
>> 
>> Jorge Gustavo Rocha and Anne Ghisla
>> (your 2020 OSGeo Elections CROs)
>> 
>> [1] https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Board_Election_2020_Results
>> _______________________________________________
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>> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/charter-members
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> --
>> 
>> Alex Leith
>> 
>> m: 0419189050
>> 
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>> 
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