[OSGeo Oceania] [Aus-NZ-QGIS-group] Community consultation: OO Org QGIS Special Interest Group Charter

Sun Nov 29 10:21:01 PST 2020

Hi all

Thanks Andrew for addressing all the questions people have. Responding
to your reply to my questions:

- OK about sponsorships and so on, I can see that the QGIS SIG could
choose to align events with FOSS4G SotM Oceania editions, thereby
really streamlining logistics and effort and working with the whole
community

- conflict of interest: really hard in a community where everyone
knows each other - my science community is the same, anonymous reviews
are almost impossible! I think yes, recusing people from decision
making is a great step. I also think it's unrealistic to make a
blanket statement that fits all cases. I think the best approach might
be to handle each case as it comes, and do it transparently. To make a
concrete suggestion - and feel free to disagree - the charter could
contain a statement  like 'Conflicts of interest, real or perceived,
will be handled in accordance with our code of conduct. This means
recusing relevant parties from decision making as early as possible in
the process, and discussing the matter openly with our community. In
some cases, we may have to proceed by funding people who make
decisions about where to apply funds. This is a function of a small
and close knit community, and will always be discussed openly with the
community first.'

There are probably heaps of loopholes in that, and impossible to close
them all - so the short version is to write exactly what you wrote in
reply: 'we will be ethical, and will resist being a funding pipeline
to particular people or companies'. The community has to step up to
make that always true.

I have no thoughts to add to John's about SIG membership, except I
really like that you're thinking about how to manage it in an
inclusive fashion.

I do have an opinion about creating sub-SIGS though - in my science
career I've seen multiple disciplines discover the same tooling a few
times. So my hot take is 'avoid having discipline-specific subgroups',
way better to let disciplinary cross-fertilisation happen ;)

Cheers,

Adam

On Sun, 29 Nov 2020 at 09:39, Andrew Jeffrey <aljeffrey83 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> No problems, with everything going on post conference, elections, and the upcoming holiday period we may need to leave this open for comment for a little longer than normal. Happy to go with what people feel is needed here.
>
> John, regarding your thoughts on the membership I agree 100%, the charter at the moment has a sentence stating the SIG should be "providing membership avenues for people that may not be in a financial position to pay a fee" perhaps we need more clarity around membership and what it involves in the charter? To be clear, my thoughts are that keeping in the spirit of OO the SIG should be available to everyone and no one should be excluded from participating, on reflection the term "membership" might come across as prohibitive. I'm sure we'll come up with something acceptable through conversation here.
>
> For context though it may be helpful to explain the intent behind the idea of a "membership". The issues it aims to address are below:
>
> There is some difficulty associated with organisations giving a "donation", but purchasing something like a "membership" to a professional user group seems to be acceptable and is easier justified in some procurement processes.
> For individuals donating to QGIS helps the project but has little influence on their QGIS experience, also individuals on the QGIS list have indicated trouble participating in crowdfunding campaigns due to high minimum pledges.
>
> A QGIS SIG would allow us to receive money from interested parties wanting to support QGIS in our region, pool the funds and then spend as the SIG sees fit. The best part is the money will be spent on the items scoped in our charter which is again relevant to users in our region. For lack of a better term think of it as a "co-op" for the donations alot of us already make on an ad-hoc basis. Ideally we would be looking to get a majority of the membership from organisations that we know use QGIS to support a bulk of this activity, and then people willing to make a personal contribution would then add to that. Then if people can't make a personal contribution that is also fine because they can assist in other ways.
>
> That was the idea in justifying a membership fee. We will need to offer something in return, for individuals that will be the professional network and for organisations that will be recognition at this early stage but as we progress this may evolve.
>
> Thanks
> Andrew
>
>
> On Sat, Nov 28, 2020 at 3:57 PM John Bryant <johnwbryant at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Andrew, thanks a lot for continuing to push this forward. It has been a couple of months since I last looked at this, and I haven't really had a detailed look at the SIG concept yet.
>>
>> I'm 'out of the office' for the next few days, but would be happy to join in this discussion when I get back, and have a proper chance to refresh my memory and get up to speed on SIGs.
>>
>> One brief thought, it feels like it would be good to consider a free (or very inexpensive) tier of membership. I suspect many of us can't justify (or can't afford) to spend much, but could contribute in other ways.
>>
>> Cheers
>> John
>>
>> On Fri, 27 Nov 2020, 9:46 am Andrew Jeffrey, <aljeffrey83 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Adam,
>>>
>>> Thanks for the feedback.
>>>
>>> I agree the SIG shouldn't bring about any duplication of the processes that the OO currently does. A SIG as defined in the guidelines should be "enabling OSGeo Oceania members to interact, share knowledge, organise events, and collaborate on a selected, targeted topic within the scope of OSGeo Oceania". So a SIG should be complementary to the OO function and allow the interested community members to drive engagement in that area without the OO board having to do it all. Like you say though, open communication between the SIG and the OO board is key in making sure there is no overlap being introduced. Also to be clear the SIG isn’t seeking “sponsorship” as such but we do want to be able to collect a membership fee for people/orgs wanting to be involved, allowing them to fund items that maybe other OO members don’t see as important. I don’t see this taking away from conference sponsorship and this idea will ultimately sink or swim depending on whether the SIG members have an appetite to fund the items in our scope.
>>>
>>> As for the conflict of interest, to be honest I don't know the answer in regards to how that should be dealt with. I think we need to add something in the charter, would removing those people from the proposal and voting process be enough? How does OO deal with this? I don’t want to rule local devs out of working on this because they belong to the group, but we also don’t want to become the entry point to company XYZ.
>>>
>>> Thanks for the feedback.
>>>
>>> Andrew
>>>
>>> On Fri, Nov 27, 2020 at 7:35 AM Adam Steer <adam.d.steer at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hey Andrew and all the QGIS SIG proposers
>>>>
>>>> Thanks, I think this is a perfect use of OSGeo Oceania as a backing
>>>> organisation :)
>>>>
>>>> My only reservation with any SIG proposal is that effort isn't
>>>> duplicated about events and marketing, and also that a funding from a
>>>> small pool of interested parties (relative to other parts of the
>>>> world) is able to be effectively spread among the whole community. For
>>>> an example it would be a bit awry to see a SIG gather a heap of
>>>> funding at the expense of conference sponsorships. I guess in that
>>>> case the SIG could also sponsor conferences? This goes the other way
>>>> too - the existence of a well connected SIG makes it easier for OO to
>>>> fund a QGIS feature (for example) if it decides to do so.
>>>>
>>>> I think clear, constant and open communication between OO and the SIG
>>>> will make those concerns go away.
>>>>
>>>> In writing this I did work my thoughts through to  a serious question:
>>>> How will the SIG deal with conflicts of interest? A stated aim of the
>>>> SIG is to fund development, what will the SIG do if all the key QGIS
>>>> developers in the region are also in the group of people making
>>>> decisions about buying developer time?
>>>>
>>>> My only comment on the charter itself is that if you want, you can
>>>> link to the existing Berlin Code of Conduct:
>>>> https://berlincodeofconduct.org/ - with which the upcoming OO CoC
>>>> should be 100% compatible.
>>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>>
>>>> Adam
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, 26 Nov 2020 at 04:37, Andrew Jeffrey <aljeffrey83 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> > Hi All,
>>>> >
>>>> > The OSGeo Oceania board has approved an initiative for members to form Special Interest Groups (SIGs) within the OO community.
>>>> >
>>>> > A SIG is a way for community members to collaborate around common interests which in this case is QGIS.
>>>> >
>>>> > In establishing a SIG, the OO board requires that the group proposing the SIG put forward a charter which outlines the Aim and Scope under which the SIG will operate.
>>>> >
>>>> > Myself, Emma Hain, John Bryant, Nathan Woodrow and Nyall Dawson would like to start a QGIS SIG which can be used to benefit QGIS users in our community. To get things started we have come up with a charter that we would like to make available for community consultation. As this charter currently reflects our input we would like to put this out for discussion to see if what we are proposing is on the right path for the community. At the moment everyone with the link below has "comment" permissions, but "edit" permissions can be granted on request if you would like to get more involved and you're welcome to do so.
>>>> >
>>>> > https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lrewntrC0N1r6mfZdo1AdPhe2qTEaN5hDA2pcL0mrvI/edit?usp=sharing
>>>> >
>>>> > I also just want to be upfront that this SIG is proposing that there be a membership fee associated with the group. The funds raised by the membership will be stored with the OO org and then used by the SIG on items as scoped out in the charter. The idea with the membership is not to "make money" but to pool our small contributions to give us better "buying power" for lack of a better term. As a SIG within the OO org we can participate in crowdfunding campaigns, engage a dev to develop a feature important to us but might not be recognised as important to the larger QGIS project, or engage a trainer to provide professional development via Zoom, the types of things that are hard to do as individuals or as a user group with no funds etc. The membership arrangement also allows us to offer membership to organisations which will become a way for them to support QGIS and their local QGIS community. Ideally, this is where a majority of the funds would come from as we don't want an individual to be excluded due to a "fee", which is also covered in the charter. I'm available as I'm sure the other proposers are to discuss the intention of this further and in the open on this list.
>>>> >
>>>> > Any questions feel free to ask or if you prefer to comment on the charter that is fine too.
>>>> >
>>>> > I look forward to discussing this with you.
>>>> >
>>>> > Thanks
>>>> > Andrew
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> >
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