[Osmf-talk] Hiring help for OSMF administrative tasks

[Kate Chapman]

Hi All,

On Thu, Mar 12, 2015 at 5:04 AM, Harry Wood <mail at harrywood.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
>
> There's the old debate: OSMF should expand to hire lots of people, versus
> OSMF should remain a lean volunteer-driven organisation. In that sense we
> might say there's a principle at stake in this discussion. Maybe we're
> starting down a slippery slope towards a more heavyweight organisation like
> WikiMedia Foundation (Not necessarily a very bad slope to slip down, but it
> means heavyweight funding requirements and nasty heavyweight donation
> banners etc) ...That old debate


I hate to even point out this old debate, but I don't think of staff vs.
volunteers as a binary. OpenStreetMap or Wikimedia? Those are not the only
two free culture/open-source organizations in the world. It is a disservice
to all the others that do amazing work to leave it at that.

Is the OSMF board perfect? Or even is OSM perfect? There is a desire from
vocal members of the OSMF that the board needs to be more transparent. You
don't give us any tools to do that. We aren't talking about hiring someone
full-time forever with a pension and all those complicated expenses. We are
suggesting really a baby step which I think can really help us move forward
to support the project.

Best,

-Kate




> .
>
>
> Harry
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Ben Abelshausen <ben.abelshausen at gmail.com>
> To: Henk Hoff <toffehoff at gmail.com>
> Cc: "osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org" <osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org>
> Sent: Thursday, 12 March 2015, 8:17
> Subject: Re: [Osmf-talk] Hiring help for OSMF administrative tasks
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Mar 11, 2015 at 11:31 PM, Henk Hoff <toffehoff at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Keep them coming :-)  We appreciate your input.
>
> I completely understand the need for payed help to do administrative work
> and trust the board when they say it would be a good step to hire someone.
>
> Withing the OSM Belgium working group, as part of OKFN Belgium, we have
> one person who is dedicated to the organization and helps the volunteers
> (us) when we need him.
>
> It is great to have someone to fall back on and to have someone that takes
> care of stuff that you would never get to doing when volunteering. I'm
> thinking for example about rethinking and optimizing the way we
> write/send/receive invoices, manage sponsors and write all the documents
> needed, evaluating the financial situation of a project/event, spell check
> blogposts, give feedback on communication, keep volunteers awake when there
> are deadlines, ...
>
> What is also very important is to have someone who works without the
> constraints of being a volunteer (and the time constraints that come with
> it). Someone that is there to always keep an eye on things, to reply to
> email, even when it's just 'we will get back to you after I consult this or
> that person' someone to respond and manage small things on a daily basis.
>
> Without this person we would be a lot less effective at what we do!
>
> Cheers,
>
> Ben
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> osmf-talk mailing list
> osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/osmf-talk
>
> _______________________________________________
> osmf-talk mailing list
> osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/osmf-talk
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/osmf-talk/attachments/20150312/03869c05/attachment.html>