[Local-chapters] Starting Over

[Serge Wroclawski]

I heard through the grape vine that the local chapters agreement was
not accepted by the OSMF board.

I'm sure that the people who worked on the agreement are very
disappointed (to say the least).

I'm hoping, though, that we can take this situation and see it as an
opportunity.

A number of people on and off this list had serious concerns about the
agreement and the process. I count myself as one of those.

I'm hopeful that the local chapters working group can see this
situation as a chance to take feedback from proto-chapters and create
a new agreement hand-in-hand with these groups.

Some general thoughts on this, and I apologize in advance for this
mail being so long (and probably quite boring):

1) Selling the Local Chapters Idea

I think one of the main issues missing from the previous LC agreement
was the idea that OSMF needs to "sell" to these local chapters.

The previous agreement seemed premised on the idea that local chapters
would want to be associated with OSM and thus created a structure
around that. It reminded me a bit of a franchise agreement.

The fundamental difference here is that we (the local chapters) are
not selling anything.

Wikimedia actually distributed money to its chapters. If OSM can't do
the same, then it needs to provide some other tangible benefit to its
local chapters (and not just the use of trademarks).

2) Transparency

My main complaint about the process has been the lack of transparency.
This agreement seemed to come out of nowhere.

I know the term transparency can be vague, so here are some concrete
actions I'd like to see:

  a) More discussions happening on this mailing list.

  b) Draft agreements should get input from the (proto) local chapters
before being sent to other
  bodies, especially if the local chapters are going to be expected to
follow them.

  c) Meeting minute should be complete and cover all reports,
discussions, votes, etc.

  d) Meeting times should possibly be changed. As several of us in the
US have said, your
      current meeting time of 3am on a weekday is nearly impossible
for us. That ends up being
      8am GMT, and 9/10am in Europe. Can an alternate time be
proposed? I'd suggest using
      doodle.com to find out the times which would work best for the
constituent parties and
      working from that list. In the US we've did that and shifted our
meeting day accordingly
      after getting feedback that the meeting time was unworkable for people.

3) Separation of Interests between Local Chapters and the OSMF

The original LC document had all LC members being OSMF members. I
understand the desire to increase OSMF participation, but I'd like
these two issues to be separated.

Even if there wasn't the issue of fees collection (which turned out to
be a huge sticking point), I think this was the catalyst for the
request for all membership information from the local chapter, which
several folks found to be a problem.

If the LC chapter members aren't OSMF members, then this issue should go away.

4) All requirements by local chapters need to be very specific.

Statements such as "need to provide services" put local chapters in a
difficult bind. How can one agree to something when we don't know what
that agreement is?  Any requirements by the OSMF need to be spelled
out- or if that's unworkable, then procedures for working with the LC
need to be worked out if, eg a local chapter is involved in
wrongdoing.


I'm sure others on this list will have similar input, but those are
just my feelings.

Thanks for reading this.

- Serge