[OSGeo Oceania] new board starting soon and other personal considerations

[eli]

Dear all,

As you have read in our secretary Renee’s email on Friday, we didn’t need
elections this year as we received 6 amazing nominations for 6 available
vacancies in the Board. I would like to share with you all some very
personal considerations about this (be aware: if it’s going to be a long
email!)

It’s great for me to see we have a full board for next year. I’m very happy
to see both familiar faces and new people stepping up and deciding to
sacrifice a bit of their time and energy to help grow our community.
I personally want to thank Ponsyano and Renee for taking excellent care of
this year’s nominations and election process, especially considering it was
their first ride with it!

My bestest wishes to Ana, Dani, and Nick for their first term as board
members—I’m really looking forward to working with you! Also, thanks again
to Alex, Ewen and Jonah for deciding to stick around for another term. Your
work in the community is incredibly important, and we’re all glad you’ll be
with us next year too.

It has been a pleasure—and a challenge! —being the chair this year. Thanks
for the trust you have given me and for the many supportive and encouraging
messages you’ve sent: it feels great to know that you all care about the
work we’re trying to do! Please don’t ever stop sending any kind of
feedback; we can only learn from our errors if we are aware of them.

Speaking of things that still don’t work, I want to address one that still
worries me: the ASIC Director ID requirement for new directors. For those
who aren’t aware, Australian rules require everyone applying for a director
position to obtain a specific Director ID. This process is very easy, quick
and straightforward for Australian citizens but lengthy and expensive for
everyone else.

As the current chair, I feel I have failed to find a viable solution for
this year’s elections, which meant only Australian candidates could be
successfully nominated. While I’m excited to work with the new board
members, who are amazing and dedicated to the community, I feel that not
making the process easier for people outside Australia has failed our
founding principles of equality and diversification and it really upsets
me. Oceania is full of incredibly rich culture, and an almost only
Australian board is by far not a full representation of it, in my opinion.

For this reason, I promise we will work harder to find a better solution or
at least a workaround for next year. The resigning board has already
started brainstorming interesting ideas, including opening nominations
months before the elections and helping non-Australian candidates with the
process, both through mentoring and covering any related expenses. You can
get a better idea of what we’ve discussed in the last meeting’s minutes,
which will be uploaded to the wiki this week.

We still need to work on improving the process as much as possible, but
rest assured we’re taking it very seriously. Of course, I am very
interested in hearing any feedback or ideas you might have on this matter.
I personally hope that those who couldn’t complete their nomination
applications due to the strict timeline we imposed (and I deeply apologize
for this) and the complexity of the ID process will still be interested in
supporting us and trying again next year, as well as all the other
non-Australian members who were put off by the process. We need all of
Oceania to make OSGeo Oceania work!

Have a lovely end of the year, enjoy the well-deserved holiday break, and
to the new members, welcome aboard! I’m looking forward to our first board
meeting together on Friday, December 13th!

Ciao, Elisa
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