[OSGeo Oceania] Transparency (was: Update)

Edoardo Neerhut eneerhut at gmail.com
Mon Nov 29 22:23:15 PST 2021 

Hi all,

It has been almost a month since this discussion was initiated, but it
commenced around the height of conference preparations and some time was
needed for reflection. The board met last week where we discussed this
topic at length and happily I can say we were 100% aligned.

On openness

The board fully agrees openness is critical to the health of an
organisation and a community like ours. There was no disagreement
whatsoever on this key point. The challenges come down to implementation.

Communication channels

Mailing lists are wonderful tools for broadcast messages and as an open and
permanent archive. They are not so good for engagement.

For example, I emailed this mailing list on August 5th
<https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/oceania/2021-August/002700.html> to
drive engagement for the conference and get more people involved. No one
responded. That’s fine. Myself and other board members have also sent many
messages to our FOSS4G SotM Oceania mailing list
<https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/foss4g-oceania/>. The level of
engagement varies, but I can speak from experience in saying that the
mailing lists were only partially helpful in engaging conference organisers
and participants.


To be an effective organisation, we need to communicate wherever people
prefer to communicate. Whatever one’s ideological feelings towards mailing
lists, the evidence shows that mailing lists alone are not enough to drive
engagement and openness. And the reality is that in some places, commercial
tools such as Twitter or LinkedIn are the preferred mode of communication,
so to be inclusive, we need to be thinking about all channels.

Board communication

As mentioned above, the board would like to communicate openly as much as
possible. There are occasional exceptions, but open by default is our
policy. I’d like to reference some steps in that direction.


   1.

   Earlier this year we announced open board meetings. While we could have
   done a better job promoting them, we would like to encourage everyone to
   check out our OSGeo Oceania calendar
   <https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?src=dgea06cf2tu9ukl2f7nmfqjp98%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=America%2FLos_Angeles>and
   join for future board meetings.
   2.

   Our Comms Working Group has put together this survey
   <https://us17.list-manage.com/survey?u=26f3c80da46835144592b59b6&id=0d8b091d99>
   which seeks to further understand how people prefer to receive and engage
   with OO communications. Please have your say
   3.

   Board meeting minutes continue to be published on the wiki
   <https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Oceania#2021>. I'll try to do better by
   making updates here more regularly.
   4.

   We finally put together a website <http://osgeooceania.com/> to give us
   a permanent place to share content. We’ve invited contributors and anyone
   from the community is welcome.
   5.

   We hired a member of our Pacific community to help us engage the wider
   community more.
   6.

   Maptime Oceania’s Slack
   <https://join.slack.com/t/maptimeoceania/shared_invite/enQtNDU3MTU3ODkyMjU2LThiMWU4MjZjNjM0ZWRiMWZlNWE2OTZjYjM0ZTMzZDEwMzc5MTAzN2Q2MzMyZDMzYTMwNjc5NGIxYjY4MDRiMjM>
   is used by OO for a lot of shorter, often more casual communication. Slack
   recognises OO as an NFP and has granted us free NFP access which gives us
   the ability to preserve all messages in the Workspace.
   7.

   Please join our AGM
   <https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Dx-amRm1QlWoBBT-fIQOmw> on December
   17th. There is a Q&A section and plenty of opportunities to discuss OO’s
   efforts in 2021 and beyond.


Is there more we can do on openness? Absolutely!

I am incredibly grateful to a number of people throughout the year who have
drawn attention to Wiki pages that needed updating or information that was
lacking. Many of these individuals took it upon themselves to update
content and that’s exactly the kind of help we need.

If other ideas come to mind, join a board meeting, send a message on the
mailing list, or just contact us however you feel comfortable.

Looking forward

I am super excited by the opportunities the new board opens up and the
enthusiasm we are seeing from new members of the community. Despite a very
challenging two years, over 200 people attended our conference earlier this
month and notably 3 local hubs were formed in the Pacific.

I’m very positive about the future of OSGeo Oceania, but it all comes down
to the community. We welcome all and encourage any ideas and support to
ensure more free flowing communications.

Kind regards,

Ed


On Mon, 29 Nov 2021 at 22:01, Alex Leith <alexgleith at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Everyone
>
> I'm not going to address John's concerns directly.
>
> The reality is that this is a community of volunteers and there are some
> things we must do, which we do, and others that we'd like to do, which
> sometimes slip. But on transparency, we have been communicating on lists,
> posting minutes of Board meetings and we've opened up a section of Board
> meetings to anyone who would like to attend.
>
> When we are communicating on this list and others, I ask that we all
> understand that there are people at the other end. For those of us on the
> Board who give freely of our time, we do it because we care about this
> community. I’ll continue to do the bookkeeping work I do in the background,
> and I’d be grateful to anyone who would like to have a look at the books
> with me. We’ve been open to people stepping up and helping all along. That
> is how we got started with the event in Melbourne, with so many people
> joining our little do-ocracy to make an exciting time! Not all times are
> exciting though, and there’s still things to do in those interstices.
>
> I really like our community, I've met some wonderful people at the
> conferences and enjoy working with everyone on the Board. The thing I'm
> most proud of is the work we've done over the last couple of years on
> travel grants and on including the Pacific Island Countries and
> Territories. This year, through microgrants and through the highly attended
> hubs across Oceania, we’ve been able to really give back to our community,
> and I reckon that’s great.
>
> Personally, I'm excited for an in person conference next year and hope
> that people are thinking about sticking their hand up to help out like
> before, because, like I said, there’s always more to do.
>
> Kind regards,
>
>
>
> On Wed, 10 Nov 2021 at 17:55, Edoardo Neerhut <eneerhut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi John,
>>
>> Thanks for separating out this discussion. I appreciate that.
>>
>> There is a lot to respond to here and myself and other board members have
>> been mulling over it. I think it's best we discuss as a board after the
>> conference to ensure positions are summarised fairly. Many of us are caught
>> up in conference proceedings, much of which have been discussed openly on
>> foss4g-oceania at lists.osgeo.org.
>>
>> People are welcome to contribute to the discussion in the meantime and I
>> sincerely hope we can make progress on the theme of openness.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Ed
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, 5 Nov 2021 at 23:22, John Bryant <johnwbryant at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I've split this into a new thread and removed the original private
>>> email, which was posted by mistake.
>>>
>>> I'm very sorry to see Bruce choosing to step away, I have great respect
>>> for his inputs over the last few years. I think it raises an important
>>> issue for OSGeo Oceania and this community.
>>>
>>> I agree with Edoardo and Bruce that communications must be open, for
>>> reasons both principled and pragmatic; this is what open source communities
>>> are all about.
>>>
>>> OSGeo Oceania was created on a promise of transparency [1], and should
>>> live up to that promise. The board in particular has the opportunity to
>>> lead by example, and set the tone for this open community.
>>>
>>> I believe most of the current board agrees with this, and the 2021 board
>>> got off to a great start, returning discussion to public lists, using a
>>> public Loomio for voting on motions, and voting in favour of opening board
>>> meetings [2]. Kudos to Edoardo for his huge efforts in leading this push.
>>>
>>> Part way through the year the board's public discussion seemed to drop
>>> off considerably, immediately following a discussion about transparency
>>> (ironically).
>>>
>>> As an outsider, I don't know what the board discusses in private. But if
>>> I may speculate: there may be a small minority who prefer the board to
>>> operate in private, and the force of their opposition to measures intended
>>> to improve transparency could have a chilling effect on the rest of the
>>> board's commitment to operate in public.
>>>
>>> I believe this dynamic, if it exists, is a severe detriment to the
>>> functioning of the organisation, and I hope it comes to an end as soon as
>>> possible.
>>>
>>> John
>>>
>>> [1] OSGeo Oceania Terms of Reference:
>>> https://drive.google.com/file/d/13aZ6L08ke1-l32I7c00MahyEKgxeZkq8
>>> [2] https://www.loomio.org/d/f0xNZQKg/open-board-meetings
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sat, 6 Nov 2021 at 07:31, Bruce Bannerman <
>>> bruce.bannerman.osgeo at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> 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/
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Oceania mailing list
>>>> Oceania at lists.osgeo.org
>>>> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/oceania
>>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>> Oceania mailing list
>> Oceania at lists.osgeo.org
>> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/oceania
>>
>
>
> --
> Alex Leith
> m: 0419189050
> _______________________________________________
> Oceania mailing list
> Oceania at lists.osgeo.org
> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/oceania
>
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