[Osmf-talk] The role of face-to-face meetings in the future of the OSMF board

Mon Oct 27 13:08:13 UTC 2014

I agree there are ways to meet efficiently using various technologies. I'd say that yes, flying people around is more expensive but a) the benefit outweighs the cost and b) finding money isn't hard, we just need to think bigger than a $10k budget. What could we achieve with $500k or $5 million? There are plenty of foundations out there that would love to fund a great cause like ours, we just need a rational set of people on the board who'd be accountable for it.

Steve

> On Oct 27, 2014, at 12:35 AM, <Marek.Strassenburg-Kleciak at elektrobit.com> <Marek.Strassenburg-Kleciak at elektrobit.com> wrote:
> 
> +1 and -1 as well:
> +1: Costs. I have been working for years as a manager in an internationally active company. Teleconferences are daily bread. Use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VSee if you don´t like other commercial products. We do it also here: http://www.i-locate.eu/advisory-board/ because of members from different parts of the world.
> -1: Not everything is done with Telco. Sometimes it is important to see people face to face and discuss things directly. If the discussion is to short and you need to achieve results, make longer meetings. I would say, 2 two-day meetings  each year should be ok.
> 
> BR,
> Marek Strassenburg-Kleciak
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Frederik Ramm [mailto:frederik at remote.org] 
> Sent: Sunday, October 26, 2014 11:27 PM
> To: osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org
> Subject: [Osmf-talk] The role of face-to-face meetings in the future of the OSMF board
> 
> Hi,
> 
>   much has been said about personal meetings ("face-to-face" or "F2F") in the last couple of days. I think one person as even suggested that board members should commit to *multiple* in-person meetings per year but I may mis-remember, I can't find that bit right now.
> 
> When I joined the board after the Tokyo AGM, planning for a new face-to-face meeting was already underway, and I somewhat reluctantly agreed to take part. Newly elected to the "secretary" position, I drew up the agenda with contributions from everyone who wanted to discuss something, Oliver arranged a meeting space and accomodation in Berlin, and everybody booked their flights or train tickets or whatnot. (That particular meeting had Henk, Oliver, Steve, Matt, Simon, Dermot, and myself attending. Richard Fairhurst who was still on the board at the time couldn't come.)
> 
> I had read minutes and blog posts from previous OSMF face-to-face meetings and my general impression was that such meetings were largely a bonding exercise at which one would have good food, go horseback riding, and agree on lofty goals for the future of OSMF that would then never be attained.
> 
> The minutes from our meeting are here:
> 
> http://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Board_Meeting_Minutes_2012-11-03
> 
> As you can see, we were mainly concerned with defining where we stand - can we find common goals, a common understanding of whom the OSMF is there to serve, who "the community" is, and so on. It was already obvious at the time that there were different ideas about this and we hoped that we'd be able to define a common ground. That also included a "rules of order" document that was supposed to lay down some basic rules for how we operate.
> 
> The minutes read ok, but it was a very stressful weekend, mostly because we had decided that we don't want to overrule people - we wanted to only produce documents that we *all* agreed with. This occasionally led to half-hour discussions about a single sentence which 5 people were already ok with. With hindsight, it was wrong of us to be so polite; we should have had more majority decision.
> 
> We ended the meeting with a lot of unanimous decisions but it didn't help much really. Maybe too much of the "unanimous" was just an exasperated "ok, if I say yes will we then stop discussing this?". Maybe we all *wanted* to believe that agreeing on these things would make us an effective group that can work together well. There were some heated discussions but overall, I found that the atmosphere was friendly. We didn't go horseback riding but we did have good food. During the breaks we talked about private stuff that was unrelated to our OSMF work in an attempt to bridge any gaps that might exist - even if you disagree with the other person's vision for OSMF, you can still agree about a film you both liked, and so on.
> 
> After Birmingham, when Kate had been newly elected as a replacement for Richard, we discussed a potential F2F on several occasions. On average, the situation was like this:
> 
> Two people said that we need to have a F2F because it would be the professional thing to do and the only chance to get over our difficulties in working together and decide on the future of the OSMF.
> 
> One person said that they would like to weigh the cost against the potential outcome and asked to have a report on how much the Berlin F2F had cost. (Such a report has to this day never been compiled.)
> 
> Three people were somewhere on the fence, and said things like "sounds good but let's have a concrete plan about what we want to achieve first", or said nothing at all.
> 
> And I was usually very much against because I felt that our desire to have at least some harmony would simply let us agree to some rather less meaningful stuff, after longish and wearing debates, at a relatively high cost the the OSMF *and* the individual board members.
> 
> Now I am the first to admit that working together online is always better if you have met the other person(s) at least once, or even better if you meet them every now and then. That's why I like hack weekends a lot.
> 
> But for the OSMF board I don't see in-person meetings as the silver bullet to solve most problems. I think such meetings are mainly a self-made brainwash. You meet, you dine, you feel important, you spend a lot of money, you are therefore under some pressure to deliver something, so you try hard, and come up with a result that looks good on paper. (Go on - read some of the results of past F2F meetings and compare them to what became of the plans.) Some individuals will have more experience with such meetings and have ways to get others to sign off on what they want; others may have lesser rhetorics skills and therefore will not have as much of an influence. A F2F is not something where you can take an issue home with you and think about it; a F2F is a pressure situation.
> 
> (It also puts pressure on those who might feel unable to come due to other commitments. One person at the Berlin F2F said about the non-attending Richard: "I think he should resign if this meeting is not important enough for him." - if the F2F indeed is a bonding exercise for those who come then not coming essentially seals your fate in the group.)
> 
> Personally I have come to like F2F meetings when there's a deadline.
> When a conference programme must be finalized, I like having people discuss things beforehand and then meet to seal the schedule and have any last-minute discussions. But the board F2F is not such an occasion; to me it seems that the board F2F is seen by its most fervent proponents as a replacement for, and not an addition to, discussions held by E-Mail.
> 
> I think that in the future of the OSMF board, F2F meetings are going to become more difficult and more expensive as we're bound to have several directors from outside of Europe, so there will be long flights and expenses that far exceed £5000 or may even go into the five digits, per meeting. (It's nice if we have directors whose employers or companies pay for the trip but we can't assume that to be the case.) F2F meetings can never replace, or be a condition for, effective working through E-Mail; a board that cannot get their act together on the E-Mail list cannot expect the OSM Foundation to pay for a nice meeting so that they can all "touch base" and "find common ground".
> 
> There is a place for F2F meetings, but in my opinion they should not be taken for granted; a F2F meeting can be held if there are concrete issues to discuss or resolve which (a) are likely to be resolvable at a F2F but not (or not as good) on the list, and where (b) the usefulness expected outcome outweighs the expected expenses.
> 
> "Because it is the professional thing to do" or "because we do it every year" or "because we can then work together so much better" are, in my opinion, not a sufficient reason to hold an in-person meeting. Anyone who wants to hold a F2F must be able to explain why they think it is important.
> 
> And after our Berlin F2F and seeing how the results worked out (example
> - long discussions about rules of order, finally agreed to them including a paragraph that said all info must be shared, but that got promptly ignored), the reasons would have to be quite compelling for me to agree that we should spend money and time on another F2F.
> 
> Bye
> Frederik
> 
> --
> Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"
> 
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