[Osmf-talk] AGM and this year's election process

[Dorothea Kazazi]

Hi all,

The 12th Annual General Meeting of the OpenStreetMap Foundation will be
held online in the IRC chat room #osmf-gm on the IRC network
irc.oftc.net, at 16:00 UTC on Saturday, 15 December 2018. The agenda
will be available here:
https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Annual_General_Meetings/2018

Information about email voting will be sent in due course, and voting
will open one week before the AGM.


This meeting will have a board election, with two seats available (of
Peter Barth and Martijn van Exel).

To vote, you need to be a member or associate member throughout the
period of 30 days prior to the date of the meeting. If your membership
has lapsed, will lapse soon or your status needs updating, please handle
it now.

To become a director on the board, you must be a member, not an
associate member. To run for the board election, add your name to the
table at
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/AGM18/Election_to_Board
Deadline for members to put themselves forward for election: 17 November.

If you want more information about what the board does and does not do,
https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Mission_Statement#Scope_of_the_OSMF_board
has an overview of the scope. A lot of the foundation's work is done by
working groups, and if you want to help the foundation, you can look at
joining those.


This year (based on discussions on osmf-talk and within the board) we
thought it would be a good idea to have a structured question gathering
process:

* We invite members to post their questions to
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Foundation/AGM18/Election_to_Board
up to 17 November.
* When nominations close (or shortly after), a facilitator will gather
the questions, organise them and will publish an official set for the
candidates.
* Candidates are then kindly asked to submit their answers and
manifestos directly to the facilitator (the email address will be made
known soon) and cc our administrative assistant
(dorothea at osmfoundation.org). It's up to the candidates to answer all
the questions or just a few of them. Our suggestion is to answer all of
them.
* When all candidates have submitted their answers, there will be a
given date when all answers/manifestos will be published at once. The
proposed date is 30 November.
* Then discussion commences, preferably until 8 December 16:00 UTC, when
voting opens.

We expect this to be the official election campaign process. We won't
restrict members to continue to talk on our members' mailing list nor
will we restrict candidates to continue discussions, but we don't
encourage them to do so. The official answers and questions thereof
should be what voters use to judge.


Key election dates:

Calendar at https://teamup.com/ksgrbvx41rzijhbv3f

* 2018-11-06: Start of submission of nominations and questions via the
OSM Wiki -
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/AGM18/Election_to_Board
* 2018-11-15: Deadline for becoming a new member eligible to vote or to
stand for election
* 2018-11-17: Deadline for members to put themselves forward for
election by adding their name on the OSM wiki
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/AGM18/Election_to_Board
* 2018-11-17: Deadline for members to post questions for the candidates
to
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Foundation/AGM18/Election_to_Board
* 2018-11-17: Official set of questions published by the facilitator.
* 2018-11-30: Candidates' answers and manifestos published by
facilitator or the board.
* 2018-11-30 to 2018-12-08 16:00 UTC: Community discussion.
* 2018-12-08 16:00 UTC: Voting opens (exactly 1 week before AGM).
* 2018-12-15 16:00 UTC Start of Annual General Meeting on IRC, Deadline
for voting.

Links:
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/AGM18/Election_to_Board
https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Annual_General_Meetings/2018