[HOT] Board Elections a Personal Opinion

[Kate Chapman]

Hi All,

I was going to share who I am voting for and why for the board
elections. Feel free to ignore me and this perhaps unorthodox email.
I'm sending it though because it can be difficult sometimes to be
intimately aware of the candidates. So this is my thoughts/strategy
about who I think should be on the board and why.

Firstly I think describing the role of the board is important. I view
the board as necessary and important for the policy and strategy of
HOT. What does that really mean? Well the board should not be involved
in the day to day running of the organization, but should set the
policies that allow those working for the organization to function.
Meaning the board would set a policy on how the hiring works, but
others would actually make sure people were hired using that policy.
The same goes for strategy. That isn't to say the membership shouldn't
be involved in these discussions, just that the board should be
thinking about things from a high-level and ensuring such decisions
are made.

Joseph Reeves: Joseph has been involved in the majority of operation
aspects of HOT's work. I think this allows him intimate knowledge of
the problems and the solutions that the board could implement through
policy.
Mikel Maron: Mikel has been intimately involved in both the founding
of HOT and the general OSM community for years. He has already proved
himself as an asset to HOT through the development of the HOT strategy
document, helping create partnerships and often providing advice.
John Crowley: John's ability to connect informal communities to large
organizations is core skill the HOT board needs in development of
strategy.
Harry Wood: Harry consistently makes sure we don't lose our connection
to our OSM roots. Meaning OSM volunteers are core to the success of
HOT, we cannot alienate them and need to make sure we are still inline
with the community.
Heather Leson: Heather has consistently been a great partner through
her work at Ushahidi, CrisisCommons and Random Hacks of Kindness. She
consistently advocates for the use of OSM in other open source tools.
A not well enough known fact is Heather hosts the best hackathons I
have ever attended. Her key reason for running for the board is to
help us with fundraising, let's face it not having money should not be
what gets in the way of doing good work.
Pierre Béland: Pierre consistently organizes and leads remove
activations. This is a core competency of HOT and something that we
cannot forget.
Schuyler Erle: While everyone I've already mentioned understands the
importance of open source tools. Schuyler has made them a reality over
the years, through projects such as OpenLayers. Advocacy for the
importance of not just open data, but open source is key.

You'll notice that I haven't voted for anyone that is paid to work for
HOT. This is because I've had a serious change of heart in the past
few months on the idea. This has been through the HOT community survey
and researching having employees on board of directors. The key
document for me is from the Better Business Bureau (BBB). For those
not from the US this organization is very well respected watchdog for
businesses. This is primarily through a business and non-profit
reviews service that has been around for a long time. Their charity
evaluation guide says "Not more than one or 10% (whichever is greater)
directly or indirectly compensated person(s) serving as voting
member(s) of the board. Compensated members shall not serve as the
board's chair or treasurer." So we've really been messing this up over
the past few years and need to fix it to be a more transparent
organization.

I believe at some point the membership should vote on this issue and I
hope the new board will make it a goal for the first quarter of their
term.

(1) http://www.bbb.org/us/Charity-Evaluation/

Best,

-Kate