[Osmf-talk] [OSM-talk] Modus operandi of the board

[Clifford Snow]

On Tue, Oct 21, 2014 at 9:04 PM, Kate Chapman <kate at maploser.com> wrote:

> One issue is we really have no idea what the OSMF membership wants. We
> know what some vocal people who write English well want. What a lot of
> communities do to determine this is have a yearly community survey. Simply
> voting for board members itself doesn't give any idea what people generally
> want. For example last year I received the most votes in the board
> election. Does that mean I have "brand recognition", people liked my
> manifesto or simply there were people that thought only men shouldn't be on
> the OSMF board? We have no idea. A community survey is one way we could
> start to get a better grip on the desires for the OSMF. Of course we still
> would be bound to the opinions of only those that like to answer surveys.


While it's true that we operate somewhat in the blind, just surveying OSMF
members will only give a peek into the community, not just people who
respond to surveys but the small handful of OSMF membership,  We need is to
think of the bigger community. Ideally we conduct an annual survey of all
mappers and OSM stakeholders. Getting a high response rate would be very
desirable so we hear from the many that are not vocal on mailing lists and
IRC channels. I suspect that its a small handful of people that influence
the Board.

I'd like to see a substantial increase in the OSMF membership. Not sure
what it will take. Certainly cost is an issue, but it must be more that
cost since membership isn't that expensive. I think the US Chapter has done
a good job of offering discounts to SOTM-US for it's members. I'd recommend
the Board at least adopt a similar strategy. That alone isn't sufficient,
but it is a start.

I was part of a group that felt the Board should survey the community. We
got started, but failed to complete a survey because of the difficulty of
creating one in multiple languages. I'm happy to see Kate suggest an annual
survey. If there is anything I can do, please let me know. We still have
the unfinished survey available.

Clifford

-- 
@osm_seattle
osm_seattle.snowandsnow.us
OpenStreetMap: Maps with a human touch
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