[Osmf-talk] A Better Map

[Martijn van Exel]

On Wed, Oct 22, 2014 at 2:51 PM, Simon Poole <simon at poole.ch> wrote:

> Am 22.10.2014 21:24, schrieb Kate Chapman:
> > ...
> > I'd say the size of the board to me is not necessarily the issue. I do
> > think however having a board elected completely just from the OSMF
> > membership isn't the best approach. Those elected from OSM
> > contributors (I frequently have seen in the past people post people's
> > OSM edits for board elections) are not necessarily the best to be on a
> > board. It does not allow the flexibility to seek out board members
> > with specialized skills. For example most of the board would not claim
> > to be experts in finance, or legal matters. I certainly think election
> > from part of the community is not a bad thing, but perhaps it isn't
> > the only way.
> >
> Hi Kate
>
> Your position on this seems to be similar to statements made during the
> just past OSM-US board elections.
>
> They seem to repeat a preconceived notion of a OSM contributor which is
> extremely one sided. OSM contributors big and small come from a wide
> range of professional backgrounds and without even venturing in to the
> realm of casual contributors, we have a pool of 50'000 to recruit  board
> and working group members from. Many which will trash non-editing so
> called experts in any field with their right hand bound behind their back.
>
>
50k is not many people at all, given that only very, very few among us are
true leaders and able to run an organization professionally. We would be
ill-advised to look only among our body of OSM contributors for good
governors of the project. (We had a discussion around the importance of
number of edits as a meaningful metric prior to the US Chapter board
elections last month,
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-us/2014-October/thread.html.)
I, as an old fart in this project, have personally experienced it as quite
refreshing top work with capable people on the US Chapter board that have a
much fresher perspective on OSM.


> We simply face the same challenge that every popular pastime faces that
> promises  power, money and influence. The people that actually enjoy the
> pastime would prefer allocating their time to what they enjoy, instead
> of to managing the organisation and will need a lot of convincing to
> "waste" their time on meta issues and power games, leaving control to
> people with different motives. It is not by chance that this topic is
> rising now when OSM is a clear success.
>

Speaking of preconceived notions, there are a lot of them in these few
sentences.

>
> You just need to look at the governing bodies of any major sport to know
> what happens. It isn't even necessary to consider the extremes of FIFA
> and the like. Though  I'm sure the arguments 110 years ago were very
> similar to those raised now. Non affiliated community members are
> already a minority in the OSMF board, not to mention OSM US that has a
> single token such member left.
>

And would you care to expand on the detrimental effect that has had on the
governance of OSM in the US, because that is what you are clearly implying?

-- 
Martijn van Exel
skype: mvexel
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