[Osmf-talk] Working with Dorothea full-time

[Christoph Hormann]

I want to add in advance that my comments on this matter are unrelated 
to the quality of Dorothea's work for the OSMF.  Most of the comments 
so far have focussed on that, this is a valid approach and i agree with 
what has been said so far in that regard.  But i don't think you can 
leave it at that and i therefore want to discuss different and more 
general aspects of the matter.

> We discussed this situation at our Face-to-face meeting this year[2].
> Our thoughts about the future of this relationship are driven by two
> factors:

I know i have covered this before in my comments here but this is yet 
another good example illustrating how the intransparency of the board 
face-to-face meetings and the non-open culture of the board clashes 
with the culture of open communication in the OSM community in general.  
The board has apparently discussed this matter more than half a year 
ago at the f2f but have not shared the content or results of this 
discussion in substance with the community until now while continuing 
to make concrete plans and even hiring a consultancy for advise on 
practical implementation of their plans - all without informing the 
members.

Specific example:  You now write:

> [...] by helping with the
> administration of the upcoming microgrant programme, and others.

But when you requested comments on your plans for the microgrants 
program two weeks ago you did not provide any hint that you were 
planning to administer this with paid staff.  I specifically pointed 
out the problem of a lack of concrete plans on how this work is to be 
performed in my reply:

https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/osmf-talk/2019-October/006294.html

> The biggest gap in the whole document so far quite clearly is the
> lack of any framework for handling the grants after the selection has
> been made.  This is a big issue IMO.

How can you expect useful feedback from the community on plans like this 
when you specifically hide your considerations on central aspects of 
your plans from the members when you present those plans?

My intention is not to dress down the board for this - i am sure from 
the perspective of the board there are reasons for this.  But i think 
the board should understand that this is part of a general problem of a 
culture of intransparency and exclusivity prevalent within the 
organizational culture creating immense problems when interacting with 
the broader OSM community who largely strongly despise this kind of 
culture.  And this also directly relates to the further points i am 
going to discuss.

What i strongly miss in your announcement is any reflection on all those 
matters that have been the core of the discussion when the idea of 
hiring paid help for administrative tasks within the OSMF in the first 
place.  Specifically this is mostly about the relation and conflicts 
between volunteer work and paid work.

One of the main points of the OSMF being based on and depending on 
volunteer work is that it forces the OSMF - in particular the board - 
to comply with the collective needs and wishes of the volunteer 
community.  Volunteers tend to have their own idea on how they want 
things to work they volunteer for.  In a do-ocratic culture like we 
have in the OSM community that is the base assumption we work under.  
Now if you call for volunteers but don't want them to bring in and 
insist on following their own ideas on how projects should be run that 
will mean you have more difficulties getting qualified people to 
volunteer.  You can then of course - using money collected from 
corporations - buy in paid work to fill the gap and continue managing 
projects to your own liking but this way you'd be digging yourselves 
into a hole disconnected from the community you want to represent and 
you could have difficulties getting out of this again in the future.

The SotM work - which is what a lot of Dorothea's additional work this 
year was spent on - is a good example for that.  The SotM-WG is and has 
been looking for additional volunteers for a long time - but always 
more or less under the constraint that you'd have to adjust yourself to 
the existing goals and structures of the project - which are already 
fairly far from the interests of the hobby mapper community and more 
aligned to the interests of the corporate sponsors of the conference.  
The motivation of the average hobby mapper to volunteer for working in 
that project without being able to substantially shape it is therefore 
rather low.  You can try to fill this gap with paid staff or try to 
create incentives through free tickets for volunteers of even financing 
travel costs.  But this will inevitably widen the gap between the 
project of SotM and the community further and aggravate the difficulty 
of motivating volunteers.  You will never be able to create a true 
community conference this way that is carried and shaped collectively 
by a large number of voluteers (like for example the CCC).

Again - this critique is not meant to express that i am against Dorothea 
working for the OSMF for a larger number of hours per month in the 
future.  And i specifically mentioned already in the past that it is 
more than time that the contractual basis for her work is made more 
permanent and predictable for both sides and not done in the form of a 
chain of time limited short term contracts.  My critique is of the 
board's failure to properly reflect on the implications of paid work on 
the OSMF and its position in the OSM community, of the failure to 
openly discuss this with the larger community early in the planning 
process and finally and most concretely the failure to set clear 
parameters for what kind of work is to be included in and excluded from 
Dorothea's tasks and where to draw a clear line between voluteer work 
and paid work.

> The board has therefore decided to evaluate ways of working with
> Dorothea full-time, either in an employment or freelance setup, and
> we're working with a consultancy in the UK to find out what our
> options are. We assume that the cost of working with Dorothea
> full-time would be between EUR 30k and EUR 40k per year.

Could you elaborate on what this cost estimate entails?  If i use your 
147 hours per month figure that leads to costs between EUR 17 and 23 
per hour which seems very low as an hourly rate if it includes social 
security, health/retirement insurance and of course also office 
infrastructure and communication costs.


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