[HOT] Board Elections: another Personal Opinion

Tue Jan 15 03:45:11 GMT 2013

Hey all

Joining this thread after an interesting trip to Bruxelles (DG ECHO) for
HOT presenting the lessons learned from 3 months of EUROSHA deploy (blog
post in the next days) and hearing about the terms of the new call for
participants on a third round of similar projects. Prior getting to this
conversation I had to spend some time  figuring out ways forward in the
design of a possible next project for HOT in Haiti for which our classic
open hiring will be open soon,

I had little sleep in the last nights but feel that there is a need for an
intervention here as the closure of the vote is 48 hours from us.

I'd like to state the value that I place to all present board members, to
Kate with whom I have disagreement on this matter but with whom I enjoyed
working with and the board she  composed, surely a beautiful set of talents
and for most of them people I met around this use of OSM in humanitarian
and development work.

I am also sharing here a frustration as per the limitations that English is
putting on me in this debate when there is a need to articulate complex and
subtle elements.

I think that HOT as a new organization is half way from the vision of the
organization portrayed by Kate and that there is a need to continue
progressing towards them, but that we as an organization are not there yet.

I am not going to question in this thread fhe model of organization that
HOT ultimately want to have, this is part of another debate. I just like
all of us to think through what we ultimately serving and enabling: the
development of the OSM project in Least Developed Countries or Developing
countries in humanitarian and development contexts where reslient empowered
local mappers can eventually step in and lead the response to a crisis or
run a project without needing HOT support nor the humanitarian IM/GIS
support or partnering from an equal foot. This makes of field work and the
growth of local osm groups in Developing Countries something of an art that
HOT has been inventing, which has an impact, which make HOT a rather unique
set up even in the realm of Voluntary Technical Communities.

I think that the underlying skills and knowledge needs to be well
represented at the board amongst other skills. I also think that those who
have been more active in fostering this growth in different contexts, with
different modus operandi over long time need to represent this perspective
in the board. This field rooted innovative aspect of HOT as well as Sev and
I past practical knowledge of the humanirian realm have been beneficial to
the Team and instrumental to achieving our mandate. It  has informing with
other necessary view points the course of HOT actions and through myself
has a voice in our board able to step in decision making process when this
was necessary. I just want to distinguish here different levels of field
experiences which I do not feel sound enough to replace yet the perspective
Sev or I would have made. This being said,  HOT is active growing this
field expertise in the Team through various venues so that more willing
hotties can get this exposure and be familiar with field/ humanitarian and
development and gain over time this experience and have it informed their
decision. This is because of this risk of disconnect that I deem necessary
to re-run for the board.

Kate wrote a beautiful blog post about HOT achievements in 2012 at a time
when two paid employees were boardees. Was this a problem for our
organization? Did this question the legitimacy of HOT amongst hum/ dev
actors and donors? Why would this situation be all of sudden different in
2013 when clearly our organization is gradually growing and getting more
robust and mature..

I am failing to see why this run up of Sev and I would no longer be
positive to the organization but a threat. How can two longtime committed
hotties (as you can read, this started for me in Nov 2007), working solely
for HOT and volunteering only for HOT an important amount of their time can
be disloyal to the organization they contribute to create?

Would we think this of Heather newly "hotified" and very possibly on the
board when one could have thought about a transition phase where the
organization could have benefited from her inputs as a member or as an
adviser? No. The current rules of the organization allow for Heather to
join and support at the board and I think that this is a good thing for HOT.

Shall HOT have to question the loyalty to the organization of boardees who
have side interest when no MoU between the the organizations have been put
in place? No because of the trust built over time, the expertise deployed
and the impact made.

I believe that being on this transition, in its current phase of gorwth,
HOT needs these talents to be present in the board even though things are
not perfect to remain on track with its mission and growth.

I would also echo the point made by Severin about the geographical
diversity and the need for other cutlures (including work cultures) to be
present in HOT

I apologies for this long email writn under exhaustion
Ciao
NIco

On Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 9:29 PM, Schuyler Erle <schuyler at nocat.net> wrote:

>
> On Jan 14, 2013, at 12:00 AM, Severin MENARD wrote:
>
> > 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.
>
> Severin, while I agree with much of what you had to say, the situations
> with Heather and with the 20 or so EUROSHA volunteers are not at all
> comparable. Prior to their nomination, the EUROSHA volunteers were
> completely unknown to me, and probably to most of the people on this
> mailing list. In fact, I think none of them have ever posted a message to
> this list, or otherwise introduced themselves or their work to our
> community. While I'm sure we all appreciate their contributions, I don't
> see what could possibly entitle them to a voice in determining the
> organization's policy.
>
> By contrast, Heather Leson is a long-time friend and collaborator of HOT.
> She has been involved in crisis mapping for years, and has a proven record
> of dealing wisely with the sensitive issues of mapping vulnerable parts of
> the world. More to the point, in volunteering for a role of responsibility
> on the Team, she took pains to introduce herself and her intentions for
> doing so. She is no stranger to our community, and I am proud to endorse
> her for a seat on the Board of Directors.
>
> SDE
> _______________________________________________
> HOT mailing list
> HOT at openstreetmap.org
> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/hot
>

-- 
Nicolas Chavent
Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team
http://hot.openstreetmap.org/weblog/
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Haiti
Mobile (Haiti): +509 4617 3334
Mobile (FRA): +33 (0)6 52 40 78 20
Email: nicolas.chavent at hotosm.org
Email: nicolas.chavent at gmail.com
Skype: c_nicolas
Twitter: nicolas_chavent
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/hot/attachments/20130115/5a9e5e1c/attachment-0001.html>