[Osmf-talk] [OSM-talk] OSMF organizational change: Management Team

Tom Chance tom at acrewoods.net
Sun Aug 14 10:38:35 UTC 2011


Frederik,

On 14 August 2011 01:27, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:

> I see that this could work well, but I also see that it could go horribly
> wrong. I'm not even sure if we want our board to be concerned with the big
> picture. I see the danger of the board becoming estranged from the project,
> spending their time talking to figures in government and industry and
> sponsor organisations, devising schemes on how to get China mapped.
>
> The most important thing to our project is the the day-to-day nitty-gritty,
> from the running of the servers to dealing with trouble to writing up stuff
> on the Wiki or, indeed, mapping.
>
> Would it be terribly wrong to expect those at the top of the organisation
> to be involved in these things?
>

I think this is facetious. It is up to Board members to decide what balance
to strike, but it is quite right that their principal responsibility should
be to consider the big picture, otherwise that is the point of having a
Board?

You are also forgetting that this is supposed to be, in a very minimal
sense, a democratic body. If you feel a Board member isn't sufficiently
involved with the nitty-gritty of the project than you are free not to vote
for them, and to express your opinion in any hustings. If a majority of the
Foundation members think a Board member has become too detached from the
realities of the "nitty-gritty" of the project they can vote that member out
in the next elections.

Personally I much prefer the idea of the membership democratically selecting
people to take time out four times a year to take a strategic view, properly
discussed, and report that back to the membership. It's much better than a
de facto technocracy whereby a self-selecting group of people take ongoing
strategic decisions without proper discussion, obscured from most of the
membership who don't have the time to follow all the talk and dev mailing
lists.

If you feel very strongly about over-determining the role and
responsibilities of the Board then you could put a resolution to an AGM/EGM
to that effect, and have it voted on.

Regards,
Tom

-- 
http://tom.acrewoods.net   http://twitter.com/tom_chance
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