[Strategic] The workload of OSMF

Mikel Maron mikel_maron at yahoo.com
Wed May 11 12:58:59 BST 2011


I'll raise the issue with Board, if we have time today ;)

Seriously, I agree something needs to change. We should be an oversight Board, 
but we're largely executive. We're still stuck in the middle, where there's a 
lot to do, we recognize we need help, but are going to have to work more to get 
there. For instance, we need to hire an accountant to take on the bookkeeping 
and reporting duties of financial management -- but that takes time and effort 
to look into and activate. Same with basic admin, it's something we've discussed 
in the past, but would need to work to define, to train. Other suggestions are 
even executive director type positions.

 
Anyhow, I could see a role for SWG in figuring this out, but let's have Board 
discuss this first.
By the way, we're having a face to face meeting next month in London, hopefully 
we'll get through a lot of issues.
 
== Mikel Maron ==
+14152835207 @mikel s:mikelmaron




________________________________
From: Steven Feldman <shfeldman at gmail.com>
To: strategic at openstreetmap.org
Sent: Wed, May 11, 2011 6:08:55 AM
Subject: Re: [Strategic] The workload of OSMF

Frederik

Sometimes you can't see the wood for the trees and that could be where Strategic 
could offer some perspective for example

Steven

_____________________


Steven Feldman
_____________________
KnowWhere Consulting

m: +44 (0) 7958 924 101
w:  knowwhere
t:   @StevenFeldman
skype: stevenfeldman2638 

On 11 May 2011, at 12:00, strategic-request at openstreetmap.org wrote:

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>Today's Topics:
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>  1. The workload of OSMF (Steven Feldman)
>  2. Re: The workload of OSMF (Frederik Ramm)
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Message: 1
>Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 08:37:25 +0100
>From: Steven Feldman <shfeldman at gmail.com>
>To: strategic at openstreetmap.org
>Subject: [Strategic] The workload of OSMF
>Message-ID: <3ED4539A-02B5-4D7B-9294-25BE031041F0 at gmail.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
>You have probably seen this on osm-talk
>
>The OpenStreetMap Foundation board announced today the resignation of
>Emilie Laffray.
>
>Full announcement
>http://blog.osmfoundation.org/2011/05/09/emilie-laffray-resignation/
>
>Jo Walsh commented:
>Glancing over the OSMF board meeting minutes - meeting weekly, find that 
>amazing. For other technical foundation boards,  monthly is pretty frequent. OKF 
>board meets quarterly... So it strikes me you on the board are doing a fantastic 
>amount of work to keep OSM(F) running - many tasks that in similar contexts, 
>people are paid to do. OKF recently hired a part-time person to help deal with 
>administratve burden, keep track of projects and working groups, could OSMF 
>think about the same / about revenue models to support that?
>
>Should this be a subject for discussion in SWG?
>
>Steven
>_____________________
>
>Steven Feldman
>_____________________
>KnowWhere Consulting
>
>m: +44 (0) 7958 924 101
>w:  knowwhere
>t:   @StevenFeldman
>skype: stevenfeldman2638
>
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>Message: 2
>Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 10:06:44 +0200
>From: Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org>
>To: strategic at openstreetmap.org
>Subject: Re: [Strategic] The workload of OSMF
>Message-ID: <4DCA4394.4060007 at remote.org>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
>Steven,
>
>On 05/11/11 09:37, Steven Feldman wrote:
>
>Jo Walsh commented:
>>

>
   Glancing over the OSMF board meeting minutes - meeting weekly, find
>
   that amazing. For other technical foundation boards, monthly is
>
   pretty frequent. OKF board meets quarterly...
>
I think Jo is right, and from what an outsider can see, the weekly OSMF 
board meetings seem to consist largely of going through an agenda, 
finding that there's no change, and re-scheduling the issue for next time ;)

It seems to me that there is some organisational problem in how OSMF 
board works. I'm not assigning any blame or saying someone does 
something wrong - I have only the information available from the 
minutes, and it seems that there's a disparity between the frequent 
meetings and the assumed toll that takes on OSMF members' free time and 
what comes out of it.

But if this assessment is correct, then it is fundamentally an OSMF 
board problem that can only be solved by OSMF board. It might be 
possible that a part-time hire could help, but it is OSMF board that 
would need to step up and say: Here, we have this problem, and we've 
decided to hire someone to help.

If it comes to un-elected working groups debating how to help the 
elected OSMF board do their job better because OSMF board cannot fix 
themselves on their own then I think we really have a problem. In that 
case, OSMF board shold resign completely, and SWG should ask to be 
elected board ;)

Bye
Frederik



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