[HOT] Board Elections: another Personal Opinion

Tue Jan 15 12:33:56 GMT 2013

Voting and non-voting members of HOT,

As a non-voting volunteer of HOT, I am completely neutral to whomever is
voted on to the board. I may not care who wins per se, but I due care about
HOT* transparency*. Probably because I am just a HOT volunteer, but the
only transparency I see in HOT is through *blog posts*.

I think board members should be elected based on two aspects: *time *and *skill
set.* I would also add diversity, but that one is a lost cause. (I may be a
little bitter that at least three people who I believe have contributed
immensely this year were not nominated to be official members of HOT.
People who offer different views into what HOT has to offer.)

What is HOT to me? It is a *network of volunteers*. Things move *slowly*.
With only three staff there are bottlenecks.

Therefore, we need a board with the vision and the time and energy to
motivate and encourage volunteers to get work done. We need team leaders.

 It is important to look at the individuals when voting, but it is also
just as important to look at the board as a whole. We need people with a
diverse range of skills. We need* technical leaders*, or people that can
implement new tools for remote and field work. We need *experienced leaders*.
People who understand the field and what type of projects will and will not
work. People who know how to gather funding and construct projects that are
sustainable. Lastly, we need *partners.* HOT needs to get on the same page
as its other like-minded organizations. While I do think that this is
happening, I also think that HOT and the OSM community is growing rapidly
and we need to make sure that we keep in align with other aspects of the
VTC and crisis response community.

I would like to leave off with a reiteration of HOT´s goals in hope that it
reminds voting and non-voting members how they can contribute to the coming
year:

*Goal One* Continue to refine and develop HOT’s methods and tools so that
they remain on the cutting edge of open geodata mapping, international
development, and crisis response.

*Goal Two* Further refine and develop HOT’s approach to capacity building
and look for opportunities to share lessons learned with partners.

*Goal Three* Develop internal systems or partnerships to objectively and
rigorously monitor and evaluate HOT’s work.

*Goal Four* Develop systems for sharing the stories and value of HOT’s
work.

*Goal Five* Expand the number of HOT members and people volunteering for
HOT while also building the skills and technical capacity of everyone
involved.

*Goal Six* While adding new members and volunteers, target gender,
cultural, language, and national origin diversity.

*Goal Seven* Expand HOT’s project operations into two to five additional
countries.

*Goal Eight* Lead and/or participate in collaborative efforts to build,
gain access to, or refine the tools that support HOT’s work, including
satellite images, software, data models,HOT’s operations and, as necessary,
hire staff to support operations.

*Goal Ten* Develop a stable and secure base of funding for HOT.

Good luck to all.  May the force be with you.

On Tuesday, January 15, 2013, Kate Chapman wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 11:45 AM, nicolas chavent
> <nicolas.chavent at gmail.com <javascript:;>> wrote:
> > 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..
>
> Actually people have repeatedly emailed me off list and said they did
> not think it was appropriate for employees to also be on the board of
> directors. This began after the HOT strategic meeting last year when
> the decision to pay you and I stipends was made. It is not that the
> situation it is different, it is that we were acting incorrectly
> before. I've since done research, I would suggest others do their own
> research. Additionally within the membership survey there as a not
> insignificant amount of people that indicated they did not think that
> paid people should be on the board.
>
> I find it ironic that if we had incorporated in France it would be
> impossible for anyone to be on the board who was also compensated by
> the organization. So had you known how to do the incorporation
> paperwork instead of I we would not be even having this discussion.
>
> -Kate
>
> _______________________________________________
> HOT mailing list
> HOT at openstreetmap.org <javascript:;>
> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/hot
>

-- 
Cheers,

*
Katrina E.  *
*
*
*@MappingKat <https://twitter.com/MappingKat>*
*+62 812 83 000221*
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/hot/attachments/20130115/f15b1406/attachment.html>