[Osmf-talk] OSMF board elections - slight repost

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 08/31/11 14:54, Richard Fairhurst wrote:
> I am genuinely astonished at this, and am torn between not running because
> it's so difficult to find out even this basic information, and running
> because you appear to be a shower of blithering incompetents and could do
> with a large dose of clue.

Let's put it more diplomatically:

If we're truly interested in competent people from all walks of OSM 
standing up for election, then we need to do better.

First of all, it needs to be crystal clear, months before the election,

* how many seats are up for election
* what the deadlines are
* who's elegible to stand, to vote, and how.

Also, of course, it must be made clear what working on the board entails.

But I hesitate to blame the board for this. At least in similar 
organisations known to me, the board has only very limited control over 
the election; it is basically something where the members decide how and 
when to do it. (If the members should decide to e.g. exchange the whole 
board instead of only four board members, that would be their call. If 
the members decide to hold elections for to the board in another way or 
at another date, they can do that, too. If the members decided that the 
board must have monthly telephone conferences, or if the members decided 
they won't pay for F2F meetings, they can issue binding resolutions at 
their AGM which the board has to follow.)

The way I see it, it is the OSMF members who run the shop, and they 
elect a board to do the running on their behalf in between AGMs.

While the board can organise themselves in any way they see fit in the 
absence of directives from the membership, they are bound by such 
directives if they should be issued.

It isn't the board members who decide what a new board member has to do 
- it is the members at large. We have to brief the board on what we want 
them to do for us, and that could also include something like the 
"handbook".

So in the end, the non-existence of such a handbook is not down to there 
being a shower of blithering incompetents on the board; it's down to us 
members not giving a damn about it.

Bye
Frederik