[Osmf-talk] AGM and board elections

[Randy Meech]

On Sat, Sep 20, 2014 at 12:05 PM, Simon Poole <simon at poole.ch> wrote:
> Yes, the OSMF board is not very diverse in any dimension at all. But
> given its consistency and the pool from which candidates are mostly
> drawn and the people our members elect in the end, that shouldn't be a
> surprise.
>
> Simply adding people not involved in OSM to make the board more diverse
> might be a nice publicity stunt (they wouldn't even have to be elected),
> but doesn't change the underlying mechanisms that leads to OSM and the
> OSMF having the make up that it does (and the OSMF board is definitely
> not visible enough that you could use a role model argument).
>
> Where we need really need more diversity is in the OSMF membership (in
> the end that is our representative political body), for example by
> making it financially easier to join. It is not quite clear if we will
> have a proposal for the November GM, but it is being worked on.

A lot could be done to promote the very existence of the OSMF to
actual OSM users, and to encourage them to join, vote, etc. When you
look at the shockingly low number of votes required to get elected
(merely 57 votes elected Oliver in 2013!
https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2013/09/09/election-results/), it
really gives you pause. The current situation is not only not diverse,
but also amazingly unstable.

There should be more OSM users voting, and more OSM users running.
What if the number of OSMF members/voters equaled the number of
registered users (~1.7mm
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Stats#Registered_users) or even
highly active users (~1% of 1.7mm would be 17,000!
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Stats#Highly_active_users)? That
seems not only more democratic, but also much safer.

Increasing the number of members/voters by promoting the OSMF to the
current user base would likely make the board look very different,
more representative, and in all likelihood much more diverse.

-Randy