Thank you all for the board nomination, and kind words.
I should point out what I believe is important in an OSGeo board, which
in turn will guide how I'd like to behave as a board member.
* I believe a board should listen to the community, work out what is the
best for the community, then vote accordingly.
* We need to recognise the limited time constraints of (already busy)
board members. If most decisions are deferred to an 8 member board, then
we are wasting the potential of the 1000s of OSGeo volunteers, and 100s
of OSGeo charter members. So primarily, a board's role should purely be
a job of oversight, validating decisions made in OSGeo's various
committees and projects.
* It is important to discuss ideas, but even more important is to follow
through with solid actions, and I believe it is important to look for
opportunities to enable volunteers to make a difference. It is important
to work out ways to collate our volunteer efforts effectively and
efficiently to make something much bigger than one person can do on
their own. Effectively, a role of OSGeo Chair and Board positions is
about help OSGeo volunteers help themselves.
* It is good for a board to have a breadth of experience and opinions,
but even more important is for a board to be able to work together
effectively to make decisions. This means that at times, each board
member will need to compromise, because a compromise is almost always
better than making no decision at all.
* Lastly, we should have members of the board who are prepared to travel
and this is something I won't be able to fulfil due to my family
situation. And as I live in Australia, I work the graveyard shift of the
rest of the world, which means awkward meeting slots for some. Before I
take on a board position, I will need to ask other board members if they
are in a position to work around this.
On 29/07/2012 5:08 PM, Roald de Wit wrote:
On 29/07/12 15:00, Michael P. Gerlek wrote:
I am pleased to nominate Cameron Shorter to be a member of the OSGeo
Board.
Followers of this list will no doubt already be familiar with
Cameron: active in this foundation since the very beginning, he
chaired the 2009 FOSS4G conference, has served on various OSGeo
committees, and has worked on the OSGeo-Live project, among many
other contributions.
He would surely make a great addition to the board team for the next
two years.
I'd like to second this!
Here are my reasons for supporting Cameron's nomination:
Cameron has been active in the OSGeo community since its inception.
You may remember Cameron as one of the core developers behind
Community Mapbuilder, GeoTools and OpenLayers. More recently he
chaired the successful FOSS4G 2009 Conference in Sydney and now he is
one of the driving forces behind the OSGeo-Live community.
He is a founding charter member of OSGeo and his active participation
in many of the OSGeo committees and mailing lists (Discuss, Marketing,
Education, FOSS4G, Conference, Incubator, Live-Demo and more) shows
his ongoing dedication to OSGeo.
I have had the pleasure of working for and with him in a both a
professional context, as well as being members of the Community
Mapbuilder, OpenLayers and OSGeo-Live projects. His commitment to the
community and and open standards are exemplary.
Cameron's experience, vision and dedication would make him a great
addition to the board.
Regards,
Roald
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Cameron Shorter
Geospatial Solutions Manager
Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254
Think Globally, Fix Locally
Geospatial Solutions enhanced with Open Standards and Open Source
http://www.lisasoft.com
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