[OSM-talk] Paweł's q: what can be done?

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 03.02.2013 23:59, Clifford Snow wrote:
> I want to make sure we are clear. Are you signaling your belief that we
> need some strategic planning?

I'm hesitant to say "yes" because your sentence can mean a lot of 
different things to different people.

In the worst case, "we need some strategic planning" could be read as 
"the OSMF should make plans for where OSM should be in ten years and the 
project should then follow". This is certainly not a view that I would 
subscribe to.

I tend to avoid the word "strategic planning" because it always sounds 
so gloriously important (and attracts those who like that). Used by the 
wrong people, the existence of "strategic plans" for OSM would make 
every mapper but a pawn in some grand scheme thought out by the 
glamourous architects without whom the project would be nothing. Nothing 
could be further from the truth and we must avoid to give people such an 
idea.

But of course it cannot hurt to think about the future together, try and 
predict the problems we might be facing in five years, and make plans to 
be prepared - rather than waiting for the problem to suddenly appear ;)

The 2011/2012 board has actually done some steps in that direction, with 
Mikel reaching out to a number of professional strategic consultants and 
getting a broad idea of what (if anything) they could possibly do for 
OSM(F). The results were mixed and my reading (I wasn't on the board at 
that time) was largely that with things as they are, we're not ready for 
such a step yet. If Mikel himself would like to say a few bits about this?

Having a strategy is good but trying to find one can tie up a lot of 
resources and personally I'm not sure if starting a committee is the 
right thing. I think that OSMF should first get their house in order (I 
mentioned several things reflected in the board minutes, like Management 
Team, Articles of Association etc.) and then hopefully we are in a 
position where the board of directors can spend more time thinking about 
"strategic" things, and then, much, much further down the line, maybe 
we'll even be in a position to fork out millions for a strategy 
consultant like Wikimedia did ;)

This is all baby steps right now and IMHO not something that will yield 
visible results in Pawel's desired half-year time frame. You have to 
match up your high-flying thoughts with what can acutally be achieved, 
and in the end OSM is about enthusiasts with their feet on the ground 
(or their hands on the keyboard) whom we have to give all the support we 
can.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"