[HOT] Board Elections: another Personal Opinion

Mon Jan 14 08:00:07 GMT 2013

Hi All,

Nobody answered to this unorthodox email, so II feel I will do it, but I
will remain orthodox and not provide my own vote (and actually I did not
choose yet). I prefer to say I am debating positively without any
irritation: for those (and they are numerous I guess) who do not know it,
Kate and I really get well on work and I will have the same pleasure to
discuss with her on Thursday on our now regular meeting.
Basically, despite I already applied last year for this position, being a
board member is actually not a "must get once in my life" I feel I dream
and need to achieve. I am also aware about the concern regarding
transparency rules and I agree it should be this objective should be
reached one day. But my personal concern is that according this logic and
considering the remaining candidates, the board would not include anymore
any member with GIS, humanitarian field skills and experience, though the
HOT field activities, if they do not involve a lot of people (but this is
growing), are one of the HOT capacities and expertise and a key activity to
involve both the authorities and the citizen communities of the developing
countries. The board will have to discuss and decide about specific,
technical things on these projects, and I would like to know how these
decisions would be handled: eg I would worry if was in a board with people
having my kind of background, mixing human sciences, GIS&cartography and
humanitarian field would state about matters related to social medias or
software development. Another concern: the HOT board would then be fully
made of American, Canadian and UK people, what would be less representative
than before of a worldwide community, IMHO.
One thing we should all decide over the next year is, as said recently, the
role of the membership. It is also what we want to get as a transparent
organization, and the flexibility of the good governance concepts.
Compensated people are one, but people acting in various, sometimes close
and almost competing organizations might also be considered as another one,
and this should also be fixed somehow, in order any BBB or other
organization could point out potential conflict of interest. So do we
consider this as OK and if not, how do we solve this?
Other kind of flexibility we have to state is the example of Heather
potentially passing non HOT member to board member in one month: I actually
totally agree with Kate about Heather and would vote for her without any
problem and even pleasure; it just makes me smile after the din some did
about the nominations of field volunteers last month, and only as members.
:)

Sincerely,

Severin

Message: 3
> Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2013 06:57:40 +0700
> From: Kate Chapman <kate at maploser.com>
> To: hot <hot at openstreetmap.org>
> Subject: [HOT] Board Elections a Personal Opinion
> Message-ID:
>         <CAGn7mOpwUE4PHuvxsQmQ=Q2r5+Uen7Zip63=
> XYJUFKNAPiaNmA at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> 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 B?land: 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
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2013 04:11:29 +0000 (GMT)
> From: Pierre B?land <infosbelas-gps at yahoo.fr>
> To: HOT Openstreetmap <hot at openstreetmap.org>
> Subject: [HOT] North Mali Pre-Activation
> Message-ID:
>         <1357877489.53047.YahooMailNeo at web133102.mail.ir2.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Following the 2012 Coup and de facto secession of the Northern part of the
> Mali with large displacement issues, we started a pre-activation and mapped
> various parts of north of Mali.
>
> This week the crisis deepens with rebel attacks north of Mopti. Tonight
> the UN Security council is examining the situation.
>
> I think that this is time of HOT to reexamine the situation. Bing imagery
> covers large portions of the territory north of Mopti. Looking rapidly I
> see that many roads need to be retraced. Tasks could be proposed to revise
> the road network, riverbanks and identify residential areas.
>
> Any volunteers ?
>
>
> Pierre?
>
> Mali coordination page :
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/2012_Mali_Crisis
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> End of HOT Digest, Vol 35, Issue 11
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