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

Mon Dec 14 23:29:09 PST 2020

Sorry, but I must say that I agree a bit with Bruce.

I sometimes get the feeling, while following discussions on here from the
point of view of only an ordinary basic mapper, that it's all intended for
a much higher level of participant, or (dare I say) "experts" / mapping
professionals?

Thanks

Graeme

On Tue, 15 Dec 2020 at 16:42, Bruce Bannerman <
bruce.bannerman.osgeo at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>> _______________________________________________
>> Charter-members mailing list
>> Charter-members at lists.osgeo.org
>> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/charter-members
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> Alex Leith
>>
>> m: 0419189050
>>
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