[Osmf-talk] should OSMF AGM include time for discussion debate?

Kai Krueger kakrueger at gmail.com
Tue Sep 13 00:20:41 UTC 2011


On 9/12/11 5:52 PM, Simone Cortesi wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 17:32, Martijn van Exel<m at rtijn.org>  wrote:
>> What I'm saying is: having a paid staff member can provide some
>> continuity and bearing. When you employ a paid staffer, you know that
>> at least one person can be relied upon to be on top of things. With an
>> all volunteer organization you by definition cannot.
> Then, if we agree on this, we might need a donation drive to support
> our finances in a solid way (i.e.: 25k GBP).
Before thinking about hiring staff, it seems you would first need to 
identify where exactly the problems are, what an ideal solution to those 
problems would look like and if paid staff could actually provide such a 
solution. What areas / problems are people thinking about when 
considering payed staff?

It was mentioned that one area could be for conference organisation. 
However, as a participant of this years SOTM, I felt it was pretty well 
organized and ran very smoothly. At least as good as any other 
(professional / academic ) conference I have been to. If I understand it 
correctly, it also once again managed to make a net profit thanks to 
good sponsorship. So as long as the people involved in organizing SOTM 
(a huge thanks to them) are willing to do the work, I don't currently 
see a need to change the volunteer organisation of SOTM.

Contracting out individual services, like is currently done with 
bookkeeping and legal advice, seems like a better fit for now. Once it 
becomes cheaper to hire full time staff than to contract out the 
necessary work (and work that can't be reliably done by the community), 
well, then hiring staff may make sense.

Kai





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