[Osmf-talk] Candidacy: OSMF Board

Simon Poole simon at poole.ch
Thu Nov 23 13:18:00 UTC 2017


I just wanted to second Rob on this.

Once you stand for a, more or less, public office, you can expect the
questions and the criticisms to be polite, but as long as they are
relevant to the position (clearly private information would not be), 
all questions and information are fair game.

And you can't try to make them go way, by referring to a CoC or other
rules just because they are not favourable to you. Naturally you can
counter them by providing information or testimonials telling  your side
of the story, which I would suggest would be a good thing to do in this
case.

Simon



Am 23.11.2017 um 13:42 schrieb Rob Nickerson:
> It's a difficult one because if you stand for one of these two
> vacancies then you open your self up to challenge - essential for a
> functioning democracy. On the other hand challenging via the written
> medium is hard to get right. 
>
> Thinking about TV interviews of politicians I can imagine presenters
> putting these same challenges to the candidate. I.e. they seem like
> reasonable challenges to have.
>
> I'm looking forward to Heather's response (be that written, audio or
> video!).
>
> :-)
> Rob
>
>
>
>
> On 22 Nov 2017 11:44 p.m., "Pete Masters" <pedrito1414 at googlemail.com
> <mailto:pedrito1414 at googlemail.com>> wrote:
>
>     Sev, whatever you think about Heather, please try and show respect
>     in the way you talk to people. Maybe you think you speak with
>     passion and principle here, but you just sound to me like a bully. 
>
>     Pete
>
>
>     On 22 Nov 2017 23:10, "Severin Menard" <severin.menard at gmail.com>
>     wrote:
>
>         Heather,
>
>         As of today, since you created your OSM account in July 11th,
>         2011, you have been active as a mapper over 11 days, adding a
>         total of 1 new highway, 2 names, and 302 buildings[1]. No
>         activity at all during two years during which you were a HOT
>         US Inc board director then its President. With 331 changesets,
>         I guess you are one of the very rarest mappers to have
>         produced more changesets than buildings, actually because you
>         have the totally newbie habit to upload every single building
>         you trace with your very favourite editor iD[2], some of them
>         being not even squared[3]... Seeking to join the board of the
>         OSM Foundation with such a high OSM profile is really shameless.
>
>         Of course you do not emphasize this and you prefer argue in
>         the Election wiki talk page that you have been an intense
>         promoter of OSM and “hosted mapathons”. But actually no, you
>         have not. In any event you are part of, you manage to have
>         someone else having the required skills to run the mapathon or
>         deliver the . It was myself in 2013 International Conference
>         of Crisis Mappers in Nairobi, Pierre Béland and Samuel Paul
>         Alcé in 2014 IEEE Canada International Humanitarian Technology
>         Conference in Toronto and apparently on November 15th it was
>         this lady[4] during the 35 people mapathon you mention in the
>         Election wiki talk page.
>            
>         The goals you present in your Manifesto about community
>         building and governance mix platitudes (thank you for teaching
>         the OSM community that « Community-building is an essential
>         ingredient in building good governance and expanding support
>         », I am sure that it had never come in mind to any member of
>         this list before) and issues that have been discussing for
>         years like diversity, though it is strange that you did not
>         figure out so far that the OSM ecosystem, including the one
>         involved in the Foundation, is not reduced only to “editing
>         and building technology” people but has a large diversity of
>         skills. The diversity issue is much more related to gender,
>         language and economical context balances.
>
>         Anyway, you might compensate by a huge involvement in board
>         related activities. But not even this. For HOT US Inc, then
>         totally unknown both from OSM and the humanitarian field, you
>         managed to directly join the board in 2013, especially to make
>         the NGO benefit of your high capacity in fund-raising. For
>         years, you did not disclose anything about it, pretending
>         confidentiality, but emphasized this supposed activity for
>         being re-elected, even if you did not collect a dime during
>         this period. I was also member of the HOT US Inc board when
>         the NGO faced financial issues mid 2015 due to jeopardized
>         management and, having to make the fund-raising becomes a
>         reality, we discovered that you had not even produced a basic
>         strategic document so far, and other board members had to do
>         it. And during these hard weeks, you even complained once that
>         you had to dedicate 5 hours a week to HOT US Inc. I do not
>         know if you realize how many hours many here dedicate to OSM
>         every week.
>
>         So, why are you willing so much to join the board of a
>         community of doers without being a doer yourself within this
>         community? Just to pin the OSMF board in your collection of
>         voluntary based and open projects you “led” the same way, and
>         therefore continue to boost your CV: according to your HOT US
>         Inc profile[5], OSMF would at least join the Humanitarian
>         OpenStreetMap Team, Crisis Mappers Network, Open Knowledge
>         Foundation, Ushahidi, Random Hacks of Kindness, Mozilla.
>
>         But if ever someone in this list thinks it might somehow be
>         interesting to have among the OSMF board members a totally
>         inactive contributor with a very limited knowledge about what
>         OSM is, but with links with other open source based
>         communities, please keep in mind that Heather is not an
>         inoffensive collector of open source projects board medals.
>
>         Electing Heather at the OSMF Board membership would
>         reconstitute the former trio who in the past turned the
>         originally open, horizontal, and community rooted project into
>         the very classic NGO HOT US Inc become, highly tight with many
>         organizations from the USA soft power (American Red Cross,
>         USAID, Peace Corps, US State Department...[6]), with quite an
>         opaque governance even for its voting members and internal
>         repressive mechanisms for any member defending other vision
>         and practices for the NGO or complaining about what is going
>         on. I am not surprised at all to learn that Heather is
>         currently focus on reviewing the HOT US Inc Code of Conduct
>         (for everyone to understand: this means turning it more severe
>         for members).
>
>         I really encourage the OSMF voting members not to make this
>         happen.
>
>         Sincerely,
>
>         Severin (sev_osm)
>
>         [1] http://hdyc.neis-one.org/?Heather%20Leson
>         [2]
>         https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Heather%20Leson/history#map=15/18.9953/-72.4767
>         [3] https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/53780169
>         [4] https://twitter.com/HeatherLeson/status/930800399451410433
>         [5] https://www.hotosm.org/users/heather
>         [6] https://www.hotosm.org/partnerships
>
>
>         2017-11-13 20:02 GMT+01:00 Heather Leson <heatherleson at gmail.com>:
>
>             Dear colleagues,
>
>             I seek your support for the position of OSMF Board Member.
>             Over the years, I have been so happy to meet and connect
>             with OSMers. Please find my candidate statement:
>
>             http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Heather%20Leson/diary/42706
>
>
>             Thanks in advance for your consideration.  Looking forward
>             to our conversations.
>
>             Heather
>
>             Heather Leson
>             heatherleson at gmail.com
>             Twitter/skype: HeatherLeson
>             Blog: textontechs.com
>
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