[Osmf-talk] Consultation on the Advisory Board

[Mikel Maron]

Hey Frederik

Thanks for all the comments.

Quick note on the history. Agreed with most of the telling, it was haphazard at best. I don't think this is accurate: "in order to alleviate any fears that out of public view the corporate members on the advisory board would go crazy with ideas, we said we'll put local chapters on it too". Perhaps that was in some Board members minds, but it wasn't made explicit, and I certainly didn't see it that way.

> Has the board *also* separately engaged local chapters, in the same way, or is this another way of saying "we'd like to keep the corporate members and ask them for advice, and we're not really interested in the rest"?

Absolutely not. We are very interested to engage local chapters in a more involved way. For me, this is why we've organized Local Chapter Congress at SotM since 2016, and it's time to structure that more as well.

> you will need to make doubly sure that any communication between the board of directors and the advisory board is minuted and publicized. 

100%

> 3. keep the *name*, just give them two different mailing lists (i.e.
local chapters and corporates send someone to the advisory board -
doesn't say that all members of the advisory board need to meet in the
same venue)
> 4. keep the corporates on the "advisory board" and possibly nominate additional persons whom you like the advice of (e.g. influencial people from OSM's history), and reform the local chapter representatives into something else (local chapter council maybe?).

Good ideas

> Personally, being head of a small business and Bronze member, I think my and my company's interests align more with those of a typical local chapter than with e.g. Facebook.

It's not about how interests align, but top of mind perspectives on a topic. Corporates are typically consuming data, contributing in various ways, and especially building viable businesses. That's very different from local chapters who are building community, advocating for the project, etc. On a daily basis, the preoccupations of a company and local chapter are quite different. This doesn't mean there isn't an overlap in interests or individual people, nor does that mean that all companies and local chapters have the same opinions on a particular topic.

> I really, really think that we should re-think this "benefit" concept of corporate membership. Instead, our message should be that if you profit more from OSM, you should give more (=buy a higher tier). 

Agreed. I'd love to hear from companies on this point.

> I think that before this can be decided, we'll need to figure out what we want from the advisory board, and why the current setup is not delivering what we want.

We proactively organized a couple meetings only with companies to discuss the topics of hiring and attribution, and they were productive. 

Similarly, the Local Chapter Congress in person meetings at SotM have been productive, but too infrequent.

> My suggestion is that the board answers these questions:
> 
> 1. What do we want from the advisory board?
> 2. Are we getting what we want?
> 3. If not, do we know (or can we guess) why not?

We've definitely put thought into this, and others from the Board can add their answers as well. Quickly my answers -- we want to have a structured way to have two way communication with structured entities. We aren't getting what we want.  Lumping together all structured entities on a mailing list doesn't work. Direct engagement with both corporates and local chapters, having shared perspectives, live meetings has already been shown to work better.

-Mikel

* Mikel Maron * +14152835207 @mikel s:mikelmaron