[Osmf-talk] Next OSMF board meeting this Thursday, 16th of August, at 21:00 London time

[Christoph Hormann]

On Monday 20 August 2018, Frederik Ramm wrote:
>
> Personally, I feel it's a big difference. We haven't checked in the
> past, but our current rules say that the meeting is open to OSMF
> members, which excludes anonymous listeners. This means I usually
> know the people who are listening in. That's wholly different from
> speaking into a microphone to an unknown audience and making a
> recording for eternity. Next thing you ask is a video chat and I
> can't even do board meetings in my Pyjamas any more ;)

Well - i think in this point you are mixing unrelated things - no one 
has suggested or brought any arguments for making meetings with video 
and it would be hard to sell this while as said there are very valid 
reasons why allowing people from different time zones to listen to the 
recording of a meeting that happens in the middle of the night the next 
day is desirable.

As said there are valid arguments against having recordings being 
published but the fear of what other things people might ask for in 
addition is not one of them IMO.

> I think the ideal way to solve this in the long run is devolution,
> where regional boards that are in a suitable time zone get more
> powers, and the global board that is always in a bad time zone for
> some members becomes less important. The alternative is spending
> bucketloads of money on ferrying people across the globe for frequent
> in-person meetings, or going fully asynchronous.

Yes, but frankly i see no effort from anywhere in the OSMF at the moment 
in that direction.

The minimum requirement to go this way would be to establish some sort 
of subsidiarity principle - regulating that the OSMF may not become 
active in matters that can be managed on a regional level.

But even then i still think the OSMF would need to try its best to make 
its processes accessible to everyone.

By the way as Yantisa indicated this is not only a problem for the 
board, it also applies to the working groups (to a varying extent since 
synchronous meetings have varying importance there).

> > By the way Michael Reichert (Nakaner) has frequently published his
> > own notes from the meeting in German which nicely supplement the
> > official minutes for those who were not there
>
> This is a great service for the German community, and I wish we had
> at least someone from France and someone from Russia (being the two
> largest language groups apart from English and German in OSM) doing
> the same in their language. Of course Michael has his own take on
> many things and his German synopses are anything else than a mere
> translation of official minutes - but I think that's actually what we
> want. Someone from the French or Russian community would certainly
> view some things as more important and some as less, and be able to
> connect stuff the board discusses with stuff discussed in their
> community.

Yes, of course - but even for Russian this would depend on someone 
staying up past midnight on a weekday to listen in to the meeting.

Also keep in mind that if you are not fluent in English having a 
recording you can pause and where you can rewind to listen to something 
again can be extremely helpful to properly understand what is being 
said.  Nakaner's ability to do that without a recording depends on both 
a fairly good knowledge of English and a significant amount of talent 
and training in making notes and remembering details of what is being 
said.

A thought experiment i would recommend to everyone from Europe and North 
America in this context:  Imagine a situation where the board meeting 
was - for Europeans:  In the evening in America/early morning in East 
Asia, for Americans:  In the evening in East Asia and morning in 
Europe.  Wouldn't you like a different option to listen in to the 
meetings than standing up in the middle of the night?

In a way this problem might resolve itself in the future if at some 
point we manage to elect a board consisting of geographically more 
diverse members distributed more evenly around the globe and when you - 
to ensure fairness within the board - would either need to forego 
synchronous meetings alltogether or rotate the time of the meeting to 
also rotate the time zone awkwardness.

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/