[Talk-us] dead line for joining & voting in current board election

Richard Welty rwelty at averillpark.net
Thu Aug 26 15:18:10 BST 2010


  On 8/25/10 11:39 PM, Samat K Jain wrote:
> On Wednesday, August 25, 2010 04:39:53 pm, Richard Welty wrote:
>>    The deadline for join&  vote will be 5pm Friday, Eastern Time.
>> The election ends at 2:15pm Sunday, Eastern Time.
>>
>> If you wish to join, here is the link:
>>
>> http://www.openstreetmap.us/membership/
> Not to be negative, but I'm on the fence—other than the OSMF US board election, what other benefits are there to be an OSMF US member?
>
> If this has been discussed before it should be on the OpenStreetMap.us site somewhere.
it probably should be, but we've been running as fast as we can to stay
in one place.

the question is a valid one. the organization is new, and at a critical
moment, as we (the community) work out what it does and how
it interacts. when you say what benefits are there, are you referring
to member benefits, or to benefits for the community and for OSM?
for member benefits, there aren't many right now, although they
may come into being under the direction of the new board and of
future boards.

for the community and for OSM, it's about potential. there are
numerous issues confronting OSM right now. The biggest US
centric one i can think of right now are the questions about imports
and Tiger 2010. while OSMF US cannot take a dictatorial position
(everyone would just point and laugh and walk away), there are
definitely things OSMF US can do here. i myself think that the
next board should form an import committee to start developing
a coherent policy framework and an agreed upon process.

likewise, OSMF US can help with meetups and mapping parties.

OSMF US will continue to work with local committees to organize
SOTM US every year.

i don't think that this is by any means comprehensive. it's just
what i came up with on a half a cup of coffee this morning.

if you don't find it compelling, that's ok. the membership will
probably always be a minority of the active US mappers.

richard




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