[OSGeo Oceania] Update

Fri Nov 5 16:31:34 PDT 2021

Colleagues,

I have spent around 15 years with OSGeo-AustNZ and now OSGeo-Oceania. This included working as a member of the FOSS4G-2009 Local Organising Committee.

Eduardo is correct that in an open source community, communications MUST be open.

For OSGeo-Oceania this means the oceania at lists.osgeo.org list.

If I look at our list archives [1], I find very little in the way of open discussions. 

Imagine my surprise to find a FOSS4G event in Perth recently.  I only found this in passing on a LinkedIn thread.

This and the email thread below, is symptomatic of an organisation in trouble. 

We discussed the need for openness on this list over twelve months ago in response to the problems that the then Oceania Board was having. It is apparent that this advise has been ignored.

I intend stepping back from OSGeo Oceania and focus my volunteer time elsewhere.

I’m currently a list administrator. I no longer wish to hold this role. I suggest that the current board find a replacement.

Kind regards,

Bruce

[1] https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/oceania/ 

> On 5 Nov 2021, at 18:52, Edoardo Neerhut <eneerhut at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> Obviously I made a severe mistake here and I owe my deepest apologies to all involved. I do not recommend replying to emails late at night (here in San Francisco) or adding emails to CC to check whether you have the right domain.
> 
> If any positives come out of this, I hope it shows the passion that people like Celina, Dionne, and Ewen have for open source geospatial.
> We're so lucky to have people volunteering to grow the use of open source geospatial in our region. Yes there will be disagreements, but if we all agreed, life would be oh so boring.
> 
> This muppet is signing out for the night.
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
> Ed
> 
> 
> 
>> On Thu, 4 Nov 2021 at 23:03, Edoardo Neerhut <eneerhut at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi Celina,
>> 
>> Thanks for the email!
>> 
>> I can definitely understand we're you're coming from. Feeling micromanaged is an awful feeling. I'll try to hit each of your points, but I'm also happy to chat on VC after the conference to cover more ground.
>> 
>> The website
>> When I joined the board in December, 2020, I was super excited to continue the momentum the comms group had established with a website being a fundamental goal for the board. I tried to get things moving by initiating public discussions about which platform would be best. We tried to find a balance between something that gave us flexibility, with something that was easy to use and preferably open source. Wordpress seemed to be the happy medium so I created an account for us and Dionne did most of the hard work setting it up. I agree it's not a very pretty site, but there was a strong consensus that we just needed something up and we can make it better later. A website had been spoken about for years, but we finally had one, ugly as it may be. I'd love to discuss how we can improve it, but I think it's really important we maintain a public space like the current website in the meantime.
>> 
>> Onboarding Lani
>> I know Dionne would hate to feel she is micromanaging here. You can blame me for this situation. With FOSS4G SotM Oceania fast approaching (1 week away) I reached out to Dionne to see what we can do here and whether Lani can help in the little time she had left. I should have tried to do this more openly. I think I put Dionne in a position where she felt like she had to take action. I should have just messaged all three of you openly asking for help. I'd love to see what we can do in the next week to drive people to our webinar. This one is on me!
>> 
>> Open communication
>> A lot of our difficulties as an organisation seem to occur when we have closed communication channels. I generally try to keep communications open on talk lists or Slack, but often find myself replying to closed thread email chains. It'd be great if we can move more comms related discussions to oceania at lists.osgeo.org. I think this would make it easier for people to know what's going on and make people feel more inclusive. I love Slack for quick communications, but the more important thoughtful stuff seems to work best on talk lists.
>> 
>> Volunteerism
>> This is a perennial problem with the organisation and I am as guilty as anyone. A lot of us put time in when we have time, but Ewen in particular has been flat out this year at the Department of Health in Victoria, Australia where COVID tracking has been rather intense. I'm actually amazed he has had any time at all for OSGeo Oceania. As volunteers, we can't force people to get stuff done, but we need to get more honest about when stuff can be done and when it can't be. I've definitely been guilty of this and wish sometimes I'd said, no I don't have time for this so that people will know if it'll be done. I'd love input on how we can do better on this.
>> 
>> Survey questions
>> I don't quite recall this particular scenario. The right way to do this would definitely have been to consult and discuss. Again, open communication and "sunlight" here is really helpful.
>> 
>> Funding
>> Right now we have about $86,000 AUD in the bank. This will drop by ~$10,000 after this year's conference although this is still to be seen. This year the board has distributed more money than ever before and we still have pools of money that no one has taken interest in. We're definitely keen to invest money back into the community, but the interest needs to be there. This is where I actually think the work of the Comms group is more important than any other aspect of OSGeo Oceania. I feel like we have really failed on this front, and I would love to reinvigorate it going into 2022. If people know about these funding opportunities, we'll have more requests for funding which can only be a good thing. 
>> 
>> Board 2022
>> I appreciate the kind words! To be honest, it's very unlikely I'll run for the board next year. I'd love to see some newer faces on the board shaking things up a bit. Part of the reason we have staggered terms is to ensure both board continuity and a changing of the guard. I put my hand up to go up for re-election early because I think it's really important that at least 4/9 directors are recent candidates. If I had to summarise what excites me most about the potential of our comms efforts, it's:
>> Getting people involved with FOSS4G SotM Oceania 2021
>> Helping to raise awareness of the funding opportunities OSGeo Oceania has available
>> Encouraging new people to step up and get involved. Either on the board or doing exactly what you've done and really take a hands on role in the working group which is arguably more important.
>> 
>> We have a few weeks to encourage people to step up, so I'll definitely be making the rallying call.
>> 
>> Thanks for your deep concern for OSGeo Oceania and as I said, happy to discuss further when the conference is over next week.
>> 
>> Best,
>> 
>> Ed
>> 
>>> On Thu, 4 Nov 2021 at 22:09, Celina Agaton <celina.agaton at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Hi Ed,
>>> 
>>> I just wanted to give you a heads up as I had a long chat with John Bryant as well.
>>> 
>>> Since I’m new to OSGeo Oceania and was moving from Vancouver to Bali during the pandemic, I was in more of a go with the flow mindset with the Comms Working Group. But recent events have me looking back with a different perspective.
>>> 
>>> Last July I had already recommended setting up the website on Wordpress, but initially Hamish wanted to hire one of his contacts to set up the site on a proprietary platform. As he became busy and less involved, I looked to Dionne as a friendly colleague who supported my Wordpress effort. Somehow, with no prior experience in communications or websites, she started designing and launching the site, which as expected, does not look great. It might be less time to start from scratch.
>>> 
>>> Suddenly, with Lani coming on board, Dionne’s tone with me changed, from supportive colleague to a micro managing supervisor. She’s been sending emails checking up on items already discussed. She’s drafted a social media guide that isn’t usable. She wanted a list of Lani’s priorities that we already discussed at our meeting. I even wrote her an email again to capture this. Then she wanted a work plan and an onboarding session with Lani. I already gave her these details. Then she wanted to meet because she said, “I think you we have different understanding of what should happen.” I spend 15 minutes repeating what I sent and said I no longer had time to go over this again. Then Dionne still booked an onboarding meeting with Lani even though I had already done this with Lani directly. There was no agenda sent, and then at the meeting, Dionne had not prepared anything. For over a year, I have asked Dionne for a document outlining what social media channels are available and their logins, so I mentioned this again at the meeting. Her reply was, I’ve emailed you all the logins, just check your email. After more prodding, she finally agreed to send this.
>>> 
>>> Anyways, at the same email Ewan kept repeating how the treeplanting project absolutely had to be in the newsletter, he’d mentioned this at last month’s meeting. It turns out he hadn’t written the piece yet. He emailed the copy to Lani yesterday, and requested her to fast track it because he has an upcoming wedding and he’d like to show the piece there.
>>> 
>>> Aside from that, board members have even deleted my survey questions asking if people had internet and needed tech tools. They said this was irrelevant. I put them back in.
>>> 
>>> Which leads me to my point about the board elections. Seeing what I have seen so far, I have no interest in spending my time on gatekeepers who have no experience in community building and whose efforts are actually setting us back.
>>> 
>>> I’ve asked John and am asking you to run for the board again. It will take me 3-6 months to set up community support and funding channels for the Pacific countries that need it the most. John mentioned there was $70,000 that could be distributed for programming to create a fully representative OSGeo Oceania community. I think this is also my timeframe to assess if I continue with OSGeo, or lend my efforts to supporting the local Pacific chapters instead.
>>> 
>>> You have been supportive, responsive and so easy to work with, I hope we can continue to work together during this time when FOSS4G is needed the most.
>>> 
>>> Celina
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> -- 
>>> 
>>>     celinaagaton.com
>>>     Twitter @celinaagaton
>>>     Skype: celinaagaton
>>> 
>>> 
> _______________________________________________
> Oceania mailing list
> Oceania at lists.osgeo.org
> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/oceania
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/oceania/attachments/20211106/1457d930/attachment.html>