[Osmf-talk] Microgrants meetings

[Christopher Beddow]

The selection work is not finished and 2 observers have been selected among
those who were considered by the board. The observers will be briefed on
the discussions to date and have full access to all materials used in
discussions to date, as well as the opportunity to ask open questions. The
intent of the committee is to make grant decisions with an objective
adherence to the guidelines set forth when the program was announced, and
to minimize the subjectivity required. The long term goal, if future
microgrant rounds occur, will be to have observers always welcome, and to
have a well defined process that easily makes quick decisions based on the
past precedent and rules. The most difficult part is keeping the total of
grants to budget, as we received a strong cohort of proposals and good
proposals must be eliminated not by objectively failing to meet
requirements but by some discussion as to why others are better. This
process will be reviewed with the appointed observers in order to ensure
clarity.

I do not know the exact objective qualifications required for the
observers, but Joost has commented on this above. I do recommend to discuss
if you have ideas on how an observer should be nominated, selected, or if
the number of observers should be limited, and why or why not. There is
enormous room for discussion on this and unfortunately (but by intention to
be decisive and effective) the microgrants process has moved too quickly
with the intent to get projects funded and in motion, skipping over longer
processes of deciding exact details. The future rounds, if they exist,
would benefit from any lessons that you, the observers, the committee, the
board, the applicants, and the community can provide. We are all involved
directly or indirectly and we may agree that it is important to actively
remove any barriers to making this a fair process.

best,

Chris


On Fri, May 29, 2020 at 11:53 PM Joost Schouppe <joost at osmfoundation.org>
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> The Microgrants Committee did send a first proposal of which projects they
> would like to work with, but the Board has asked them to rework that to
> something that's more in line with the policy doc. The furtunate side
> effect of that is that the two observers (Mike Collinson and Craig Allan)
> will hopefully be able to attend the meetings on that topic. We also
> suggested to the team to run them through their selection process.
>
> It is unfortunate that the Microgrants Committee was working quicker than
> the Board. I'm baffled by the volume of work the current Board is taking
> on, so that's more a compliment to the team than an insult to the Board.
> But I was present at all the meetings myself, the minutes are public, and
> I'm sure more details about the process will be shared later on.
>
> The whole observer idea came up during the process - I think that even if
> its implementation is imperfect, it's better than the other likely outcome
> of having no outsiders at all during the meeting.
>
> Note that the only other candidate we declined submitted proposals
> themselves, so in that case we just want to avoid conflicts of interest.
>
> Best,
> Joost
>
> Op vr 29 mei 2020 23:27 schreef Christoph Hormann via osmf-talk <
> osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org>:
>
>>
>> I have just been informed by Joost that i will not be allowed to listen
>> in on the Microgrants committee meetings.  The decision for that is
>> documented on
>>
>>
>> https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Board/Minutes/2020-06#2020.2FRes28_Select_Microgrant_observers
>>
>> Joost has included a lengthy explanation for his personal reasoning
>> behind the decision which i will not share here without his permission
>> of course - he is free to post it here himself though.  What i can say
>> is that it did not mention what kind of objective qualifications were
>> the basis of the selection being made.
>>
>> Anyway - it does not ultimately matter much because the selection work
>> of the Microgrants committee seems already finished without anyone
>> being allowed to listen in on the meetings:
>>
>> https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Committees/Minutes
>>
>> --
>> Christoph Hormann
>> http://www.imagico.de/
>>
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