[OSGeo-Discuss] Report from the OSGeo Board meeting
Hello, this is a short report from the OSGeo board meeting held in Denver, USA after FOS4G 2011. We had a crammed agenda [1] with many things to talk about and will continue to do so on the board mailing list [2] over the coming weeks and months. Feel free to join us there and chime in if you are interested in helping to shape the future of OSGeo. The full minutes of the meeting will be on the Web soon, the following bullets only give a short overview of the most important items. * We have reconsidered the way the organization is run and came to the conclusion that it is time for a change. * We would like to diversify our outreach and fundraising and address a wider range of activities. * As a result we have decided that the existing role of a single Executive Director is no longer the best use of our funds and we will discontinue this role. * We thank Tyler Mitchell for his great contribution in launching and bringing OSGeo into operation over the last five years. We look forward to his continued contributions in coming years. * We will make supporting code sprints a higher priority of our goals and draft guidelines [3] to that effect. * As a first step we decided to financially back-up the Islandwood Code Sprint (sign up here [4]). * Beijing has been confirmed as the venue for FOSS4G 2012 * FOSS4G 2011 in Denver was such a great success that we will consider hosting more regional events, including options for an ongoing North American conference and a Central and East European FOSS4G. * The Conference Committee list [5] will be a hot place for talking about how to organize this. * We adopted two Memoranda of Understanding with the International Cartographic Association (ICA) [6] and The GIS and Remote Sensing Centre, The University of Girona, Spain (SIGTE) [7]. * Our new treasurer is Daniel Morissette. We thank Frank Warmerdam for the good work he has provided in this position beforehand. * We welcome Alex Mandel as the new chair of the System Administration Committee and thank Howard Butler for chairing the committee so far and welcome his continued support in the System Administration Committee. * The board confirmed Daniel Morissette as chair of the Incubation Committee and thank our outgoing chair Frank Warmerdam for launching and running the Incubator for more than 5 years. * The nomination and election of up to 20 new OSGeo Charter Members are going to take place in the coming weeks. * We thank Peter ter Haar, product manager from Ordnance Survey and sponsor of OSGeo [8] for sharing his insight on the adoption of Open Source by public administrations in Europe during the board meeting. We appreciate the momentum that has carried over from the many talks we had with OSGeo members and friends at the conference and look forward to a productive coming year. On behalf of the OSGeo board of directors, Arnulf Christl [1] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Face_to_Face_Meeting_Denver_2011#Agenda [2] http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/board [3] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Code_Sprint_Guidelines [4] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/IslandWood_Code_Sprint_2012 [5] http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/conference_dev [6] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/MOU_ICA [7] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/MOU_SIGTE [8] http://www.osgeo.org/sponsors -- Arnulf Christl President, OSGeo http://www.osgeo.org ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Report from the OSGeo Board meeting
On Sep 20, 2011, at 3:14 PM, Arnulf Christl wrote: > * We have reconsidered the way the organization is run and came to the > conclusion that it is time for a change. > * We would like to diversify our outreach and fundraising and address a > wider range of activities. > * As a result we have decided that the existing role of a single > Executive Director is no longer the best use of our funds and we will > discontinue this role. > * We thank Tyler Mitchell for his great contribution in launching and > bringing OSGeo into operation over the last five years. We look forward > to his continued contributions in coming years. > * We will make supporting code sprints a higher priority of our goals > and draft guidelines [3] to that effect. > * As a first step we decided to financially back-up the Islandwood Code > Sprint (sign up here [4]). The elimination of the Executive Director position accompanies what seems to be a strategic shift in the operation of OSGeo. It seems such a move should have been discussed with the membership prior to implementation. Being and open and transparent organization calls for such discussions. Can the board explain how elimination of the Executive Director supports the new goals? Or is it solely a financial issue? Is there a strategic plan the outlines these goals and how they will be implemented? -gary ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
RE: [OSGeo-Discuss] Report from the OSGeo Board meeting
Yes indeed I can only echo what Gary wrote in his email. I might get ahead of myself with too many assumptions here - before the board even outlined the full reasoning for this decision of eliminating the executive directors position. But in fact the reasons have not been clearly communicated in Arnulf's summary thus I am just continuing the discussion here. I am very curious how eliminating the only paid staff position that OSGeo had will really benefit the well being of the organization. Obviously there are as many opinions about how OSGEO should be run as OSGeo as we have members ;) For me as a GIS professional and business owner it is a "no-brainer"(american slang) that a global professional organization simply cannot be run professionally with out any paid staff, or at the very least not very well. Volunteers are great but can do only that much. I am thinking especially of the areas of professional Marketing, Education, and User support + outreach. >From my perspective it is imperative to have a well coordinated, professional (yes therefore paid!) position to support these and other tasks OSGeo performs day to day as a global entity. If there are new directions the OSGeo board is planning to follow, that do really support OSGeo as an professional organization, I would encourage that the planning behind this and the details will communicated to the members. Cheers Karsten Karsten Vennemann Principal Terra GIS LTD 2119 Boyer Ave E Seattle, WA 98112 USA www.terragis.net ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Report from the OSGeo Board meeting
Gary, I will let the other directors speak for themselves, I am not speaking for the board, only as one board member. On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 6:51 PM, Gary Sherman wrote: > The elimination of the Executive Director position accompanies what seems to > be a strategic shift in the operation of OSGeo. It seems such a move should > have been discussed with the membership prior to implementation. Being and > open and transparent organization calls for such discussions. > > Can the board explain how elimination of the Executive Director supports the > new goals? Or is it solely a financial issue? Is there a strategic plan the > outlines these goals and how they will be implemented? Speaking for myself "strategic shift" doesn't mean much. The ED salary was larger than our regular income (primarily sponsorships). This came to be the case primarily because Autodesk has faded away as a sponsor and they were our dominant financial sponsor in the past. In good years we make quite a bit from FOSS4G and some years we make very little. There is always a risk we will actually lose money on it. So I like to think of this as "found money" and not depend too much on it in advance. Even if we were able to barely finance the ED position I was not happy with it capturing essentially all of our directable money. I have had many thoughts on things I would like OSGeo to do, but I ended up not pursuing them because I felt the need to hold onto the money so OSGeo could continue to make payroll. In past years we tried to get more sponsorships but we had relatively little success. In part I think that is because (despite good intentions) we ended up leaving almost all the fundraising work to Tyler and he wasn't all that successful. He has been great at lots of things, but smooth talking folks into big sponsorships, not so much. If we had lots of money I would happily have had Tyler continue in the existing role. But given constrained resources it no longer made sense. We may try experiments with hiring someone to pursue fundraising in the future, or perhaps to lead initiatives that we think will motivate sponsorship. Exactly what will happen is not clear and there are a variety of ideas in this regard on the board. On the broader point of "open and transparent discussions". I'll be honest, I'm not sure how to have open and transparent discussions about the continued employment of someone without risk of some people getting personal, or of unnecessarily putting them on an emotional roller coaster. As a board it was difficult to get past the original private "sounding out" phase to open discussion with the whole community. Part of that is the dynamic of a board where no one wants to step on others toes by going public before there is consensus on going public. Part of it the challenge of having such a public discussion in a way that isn't going to be destructive. We aren't talking about and internet hosting project - we are talking about a person. Nevertheless, I'm not all that happy about how things went. At this point I feel the need to tell a small story. When I left my last full time job lots of folks asked me why I didn't start a company, hire some people and build a business. Beyond sloth the real answer is that I find it difficult to be responsible for the full time employment of people. People put a lot of themselves into their job and inevitable it is difficult to lose a job. It can also through someones life into disarray if they have trouble finding a similar job in the same area. This makes "taking someone on" a big responsibility in my mind and makes the process of letting someone go be fraught with risks and turmoil. That is why I never tried to start a business with other employees. Like my father said (ok I'm making this up) "never an employee or an employer be". My point is that it isn't easy to go through this process in a way that is going to make everyone feel it was done appropriately. Once again, let me stress I speak for myself. While we seek to achieve consensus as a board, the reasons that inform our decisions vary. Best regards, -- ---+-- I set the clouds in motion - turn up | Frank Warmerdam, warmer...@pobox.com light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam and watch the world go round - Rush | Geospatial Software Developer ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Report from the OSGeo Board meeting
Folks, Eli originally asked these questions privately, but his preamble seemed to give permission to reply publicly if I so chose. I think the questions are likely to be common (and also touch on things Karsten raised in another email), so I'm going to give my position here. Hopefully I won't get in too much trouble from the rest of the board. I speak for myself, but it is sometimes bad for board members to speak individually. I'm going to operate on the basis that the value of being open is greater than the value of appearing to be united in all respects. On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 8:43 PM, Eli Adam wrote: > I have some similar questions in addition to those asked by Gary, but was > going to give the board some time (since Arnulf said, The full minutes > of the meeting will be on the Web soon). In the spirit of asking good > (clear, articulate, direct) questions here are a few I hope that the board > addresses: > > Is there going to be a paid long-term OSGeo position? I do not anticipate there being an immediate full time replacement for Tyler as ED. > How will routine work get done? We are seeking professional support for financial aspects. In the meantime Daniel as the new treasurer will have to handle this aspect. Whoever is selected as secretary will presumably be responsible for some other routine matters related to corporate governance and record keeping. Beyond that I'm not exactly sure what routine work you mean. There are certainly a lot of things that were done by Tyler, much of it was special outreach projects of various kinds, not routine work. > How will OSGeo materialize a physical presence? Who will do these? We authorized "ambassador travel" funding to support folks representing OSGeo in cases where a physical presence is required. We will have to depend on a directors and other OSGeo supporters to be our face. To some extent that was already the case. > What will be the OSGeo phone number? Who will answer it? An interesting question. I'm not sure. > What will be the OSGeo email? The OSGeo email address is i...@osgeo.org. For the last number of years it has gone to Tyler and I jointly and I have responded to those questions I felt fell within my competence and that he hadn't already replied to. I imagine this will need to be directed to one or two more volunteers with a similar protocol to avoid stepping on each other's toes. > Who will answer it and with what promptness or follow-through? Promptness and follow through may vary. I'd like to think that quite a few people over the years have found me to be fairly prompt processing OSGeo password reset requests that went through that alias. Follow through on complex initiatives will of course be much more challenging without Tyler doing the heavy lifting. > There is some indication that the Board will take care of > many of these tasks. My observations of the Board > indicate that the Board is made up of individuals who are > very busy and already contribute significant resources to > various OSGeo Projects and tasks. Action items do not > always get accomplished in a prompt manner or ever. This is true, but it was true even when we had Tyler taking on many items. There are always more things that ought to be done than people who have the time to do them. We will need to prioritize and some things will certainly not get done. > Do the current members of the Board think that they > can perform better than previous Board members? That's tough. Let's say for the time being I won't be able to hide behind "that being the ED's job". But the goal is not to beat more work out of the board. > Can these types of Directors consistently be attracted to Board membership in > the future? I have no answer to that. > Will Board members continue to serve for several terms providing some > historical continuity? That is unanswerable but I think we have maintained a reasonable degree of continuity in the past while still making room for new blood and new ideas. > Who will provide sponsorship paperwork (receipts, bills, etc) and with what > promptness? We are seeking professional support for this aspect. We are still investigating options. > What will OSGeo do to interact with organizations that > are more formal? Specifically organizations that only > view other organizations as legitimate if there are impressive > titles and suits? I am tempted to suggest that it is the organizations who only treat those in suits as legitimate who are broken, not us! That said, we will be looking at different ways of representing OSGeo effectively. That might include some sort of part time hiring or if we are sufficiently successful in hiring even something full time. But it needs to be sustainable and I think there are other ways of giving OSGeo a credible face. > From paying attention to Board traffic, it was apparent that OSGeo is > maturing as an organization and would need to make changes and I suppose that > I did
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Report from the OSGeo Board meeting
On 09/20/2011 11:11 PM, karsten vennemann wrote: > Yes indeed I can only echo what Gary wrote in his email. Then please read Frank's and my answer and come back here to say whether this addressed your concerns or at least some of them. > I might get ahead of myself with too many assumptions here - before the > board even outlined the full reasoning for this decision of eliminating the > executive directors position. > But in fact the reasons have not been clearly communicated in Arnulf's > summary thus I am just continuing the discussion here. I am very curious how > eliminating the only paid staff position that OSGeo had will really benefit > the well being of the organization. Obviously there are as many opinions > about how OSGEO should be run as OSGeo as we have members ;) In OGC they have "unanimous consent". Such thing would not work in OSGeo for exactly your specified reasons, therefore we have a do-ocracy which is enhanced by a slim overhead of structure including a board of directors. On top of this we had one paid position. This role could not satisfy all the opinions of how to run the organization. As a result the board took this decision. > For me as a GIS professional and business owner it is a > "no-brainer"(american slang) that a global professional organization simply > cannot be run professionally with out any paid staff, or at the very least > not very well. I cannot see that your professional business is a sponsor of OSGeo - it is a no-brainer that this is the simplest way of funding an ED position - if you really believe that we need it. Sorry to be blunt (German style). > Volunteers are great but can do only that much. I am thinking > especially of the areas of professional > Marketing, Education, and User support + outreach. ...which in my opinion are exactly the areas where we did not do too well in the past years - even with an ED position. By redirecting funds to realize specific objectives I believe that we can achieve more in these areas. >>From my perspective it is imperative to have a well coordinated, > professional (yes therefore paid!) position to support these and other > tasks OSGeo performs day to day as a global entity. I do not think that a single person can live up to the expectations OSGeo has of such a role. Not Tyler and not anyone else. Instead we should gear the funds towards professionals who can achieve more in their very capacity. I believe that the critical part of your perspective is summarized by "well coordinated". How are you going to do this when there are as many opinions as there are members of OSGeo? Who gives the coordination? So far it has been the board - and if this coordination was bad then we should have replaced the board, not the ED. I do not believe that one paid staff or even a team of paid staff can do any better - why should they? The only way to find ideal coordination is by excelling in communication - something that I believe we are quite good at. Ah - well, except me - I might appear somewhat agitated right now and beg your forgiveness. But I bluntly refuse to accept that a paid professional (professional what?) will solve the issue of multiple opinions. Do you remember OSGeo's very first staff member? He was the community manager of CollabNet - the closest thing I can imagine to resemble a professional in this field - and we wasted him within a few months. Instead we are on to something new - I firmly believe that a community of volunteers can achieve what we set out to do. I laughed at Wikipedia when they started and did not quite believe OpenStreetMap would get anywhere, both proved me wrong. It is only fair if you doubt that OSGeo will get anywhere, I don't. > If there are new directions the OSGeo board is planning to follow, that do > really support OSGeo as an professional organization, I would encourage that > the planning behind this and the details will communicated to the members. Please don't take this personally - but experience shows that whenever someone starts preach professionalism without being able to exactly specify what this includes, only shows that the problem has not been understood. Having said that I challenge you to help plan OSGeo's future. This is your chance. Have fun, Arnulf > Cheers > Karsten > > > Karsten Vennemann > Principal > > Terra GIS LTD > 2119 Boyer Ave E > Seattle, WA 98112 > USA > www.terragis.net > > ___ > Discuss mailing list > Discuss@lists.osgeo.org > http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss -- Exploring Space, Time and Mind http://arnulf.us ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
RE: [OSGeo-Discuss] Report from the OSGeo Board meeting
Arnulf and Frank have already spoken up, and I think they've captured the sentiment of Sunday's board decision well. To emphasize three points, if I may: * Our foundation has been financially backed by a small set of donors and the FOSS4G conference. We have lost ground on former source, and the latter source has proven to be extremely volatile. From a business standpoint, this is not a sustainable path. The ED has been the single largest financial cost to the foundation, and so given our current funding model, the cost for the functions performed wasn't justified. * I wrote recently that there three kinds of functions needed here: administrative (bookkeeping, answering mail, etc), tactical (project management, sys admin), and strategic (fundraising, outreach). The first can be done by a mixture of outsourcing and volunteers, and we're already taking steps for that. The second is done already by very competent volunteers. The third requires a very specific set of skills we will likely hire or contract out for; in the near term, the board and other non-board volunteers will shoulder this (as they have been doing for years, though often unacknowledged). This will be an evolving process, of course, and the discussion with the community is now underway. * There is considerable difficulty in discussing personnel matters with the community. Some board members have discussed these matters with other individuals privately, both proactively and reactively, to consider the foundation's positions and options. However, those were private discussions: the board cannot discuss personnel issues on a public mailing list. I'm sure you all can appreciate that. Thanks - -mpg ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Report from the OSGeo Board meeting
Thank you Frank, Arnulf and Michael for your answers to the questions so far. What you wrote matches my thinking as well so you save me from having to write another long answer. I might just add that as the new treasurer, my plan is to bring the finance committee back to life, try to get a better handle on finances, starting with a budget to be drafted by the committee, and to outsource all the paperwork (book keeping, accounting, taxes, etc) to specialized professionals who are much better and efficient at this than us. I do that already for my own business so I am confident that this will be a better solution for OSGeo as well. Daniel On 11-09-21 03:59 AM, Michael P. Gerlek wrote: Arnulf and Frank have already spoken up, and I think they've captured the sentiment of Sunday's board decision well. To emphasize three points, if I may: * Our foundation has been financially backed by a small set of donors and the FOSS4G conference. We have lost ground on former source, and the latter source has proven to be extremely volatile. From a business standpoint, this is not a sustainable path. The ED has been the single largest financial cost to the foundation, and so given our current funding model, the cost for the functions performed wasn't justified. * I wrote recently that there three kinds of functions needed here: administrative (bookkeeping, answering mail, etc), tactical (project management, sys admin), and strategic (fundraising, outreach). The first can be done by a mixture of outsourcing and volunteers, and we're already taking steps for that. The second is done already by very competent volunteers. The third requires a very specific set of skills we will likely hire or contract out for; in the near term, the board and other non-board volunteers will shoulder this (as they have been doing for years, though often unacknowledged). This will be an evolving process, of course, and the discussion with the community is now underway. * There is considerable difficulty in discussing personnel matters with the community. Some board members have discussed these matters with other individuals privately, both proactively and reactively, to consider the foundation's positions and options. However, those were private discussions: the board cannot discuss personnel issues on a public mailing list. I'm sure you all can appreciate that. Thanks - -mpg ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss -- Daniel Morissette http://www.mapgears.com/ Provider of Professional MapServer Support since 2000 ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Report from the OSGeo Board meeting
On Sep 21, 2011, at 2:59 AM, Michael P. Gerlek wrote: > I wrote recently that there three kinds of functions needed here: > administrative (bookkeeping, answering mail, etc), tactical (project > management, sys admin), and strategic (fundraising, outreach). The first > can be done by a mixture of outsourcing and volunteers, and we're already > taking steps for that. The second is done already by very competent > volunteers. The third requires a very specific set of skills we will likely > hire or contract out for; Agree about the first and the second above, but disagree about the third (in a minor way). Yes, fundraising is something that requires a dedicated person or persona, which, unfortunately and ironically requires funds. Although, there are models for getting around that (in a minute on that). However, please don't lump outreach there. Outreach is what we all do on a daily basis -- - Every time someone responds to a desperate new or (ahem) returning user's email as to why MapServer is returning a broken image or why OpenLayers is not working via a proxy, that is outreach. - The hours that Alex and Karsten and others (including, in a very small way, myself) stand at the OSGeo booth talking to visitors, that is outreach. - The countless presentations that I have given all over the world in the past 3 years, mostly as a Creative Commons Fellow, but also talking about OSGeo and free and open source geospatial, that is outreach. - Using pretty much nothing but OSGeo tools for my current largish-money project and converting all my colleagues in academic to appreciating the benefits of OSGeo tools is outreach. Outreach is a fundamentally volunteer and community effort, not requiring a dedicated sales/advertising budget or agency. This is a significant part of the "open" in OSGeo. With regards to fundraising -- I am thinking of the sqlite model. As you might know, sqlite is in public domain. However, the developer ha) at least the following funding sources -- 1. personal technical support 2. sale of encrypted sqlite 3. (perhaps, most applicable to OSGeo) is corporate sponsorship/membership to the sqlite consortium from big-pocketed private companies that benefit from sqlite. I believe part of the benefit of being a member of the consortia is that they get some tech support, etc., although I am not too sure about that. sqlite.org has details about that. > in the near term, the board and other non-board > volunteers will shoulder this (as they have been doing for years, though > often unacknowledged). This will be an evolving process, of course, and the > discussion with the community is now underway. Yup, this is good. And, absolute no issues with taking decision about eliminating the ED position without airing it on the public list. Besides other reasons, it would have been tremendously inefficient. -- Puneet Kishor___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Report from the OSGeo Board meeting
Karsten, pleas accept my apologies if my reply was out of bounds. I appreciate you voicing your concerns and please continue to do just that. We need to communicate on this to get forward. If we had a few million funding sure it would be cool to have staff in every major country of the world. Right now this is just not the case. Best regards, Arnulf. On 09/21/2011 01:34 AM, Seven (aka Arnulf) wrote: > On 09/20/2011 11:11 PM, karsten vennemann wrote: >> Yes indeed I can only echo what Gary wrote in his email. > > Then please read Frank's and my answer and come back here to say whether > this addressed your concerns or at least some of them. > >> I might get ahead of myself with too many assumptions here - before the >> board even outlined the full reasoning for this decision of eliminating the >> executive directors position. >> But in fact the reasons have not been clearly communicated in Arnulf's >> summary thus I am just continuing the discussion here. I am very curious how >> eliminating the only paid staff position that OSGeo had will really benefit >> the well being of the organization. Obviously there are as many opinions >> about how OSGEO should be run as OSGeo as we have members ;) > > In OGC they have "unanimous consent". Such thing would not work in OSGeo > for exactly your specified reasons, therefore we have a do-ocracy which > is enhanced by a slim overhead of structure including a board of > directors. On top of this we had one paid position. This role could not > satisfy all the opinions of how to run the organization. As a result the > board took this decision. > >> For me as a GIS professional and business owner it is a >> "no-brainer"(american slang) that a global professional organization simply >> cannot be run professionally with out any paid staff, or at the very least >> not very well. > > I cannot see that your professional business is a sponsor of OSGeo - it > is a no-brainer that this is the simplest way of funding an ED position > - if you really believe that we need it. Sorry to be blunt (German style). > >> Volunteers are great but can do only that much. I am thinking >> especially of the areas of professional >> Marketing, Education, and User support + outreach. > > ...which in my opinion are exactly the areas where we did not do too > well in the past years - even with an ED position. By redirecting funds > to realize specific objectives I believe that we can achieve more in > these areas. > >> >From my perspective it is imperative to have a well coordinated, >> professional (yes therefore paid!) position to support these and other >> tasks OSGeo performs day to day as a global entity. > > I do not think that a single person can live up to the expectations > OSGeo has of such a role. Not Tyler and not anyone else. Instead we > should gear the funds towards professionals who can achieve more in > their very capacity. I believe that the critical part of your > perspective is summarized by "well coordinated". How are you going to do > this when there are as many opinions as there are members of OSGeo? Who > gives the coordination? So far it has been the board - and if this > coordination was bad then we should have replaced the board, not the ED. > I do not believe that one paid staff or even a team of paid staff can do > any better - why should they? The only way to find ideal coordination is > by excelling in communication - something that I believe we are quite > good at. > > Ah - well, except me - I might appear somewhat agitated right now and > beg your forgiveness. > > But I bluntly refuse to accept that a paid professional (professional > what?) will solve the issue of multiple opinions. Do you remember > OSGeo's very first staff member? He was the community manager of > CollabNet - the closest thing I can imagine to resemble a professional > in this field - and we wasted him within a few months. > > Instead we are on to something new - I firmly believe that a community > of volunteers can achieve what we set out to do. I laughed at Wikipedia > when they started and did not quite believe OpenStreetMap would get > anywhere, both proved me wrong. It is only fair if you doubt that OSGeo > will get anywhere, I don't. > >> If there are new directions the OSGeo board is planning to follow, that do >> really support OSGeo as an professional organization, I would encourage that >> the planning behind this and the details will communicated to the members. > > Please don't take this personally - but experience shows that whenever > someone starts preach professionalism without being able to exactly > specify what this includes, only shows that the problem has not been > understood. > > Having said that I challenge you to help plan OSGeo's future. This is > your chance. > > Have fun, > Arnulf > >> Cheers >> Karsten >> >> >> Karsten Vennemann >> Principal >> >> Terra GIS LTD >> 2119 Boyer Ave E >> Seattle, WA 98112 >> USA >> www.terragis.net >> >> _
RE: [OSGeo-Discuss] Report from the OSGeo Board meeting
Puneet wrote: > However, > please don't lump outreach there. Outreach is what we all do on a daily basis Good point, yes. I was trying for a short email, and maybe I made it too short. There are many different kinds of outreach, and many of us who are active in OSGeo do "outreach" as part of our daily activities. The kind of outreach I was referring to in that part of email, the "strategic" bit, was really aimed at getting large companies and government bodies on board with us: I think you would agree that often requires specific background and skills. A good example of this is Mark Lucas' work with the US DoD community (see his email this morning). -mpg ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Report from the OSGeo Board meeting
On 11-09-21 09:29 AM, Mr. Puneet Kishor wrote: Agree about the first and the second above, but disagree about the third (in a minor way). Yes, fundraising is something that requires a dedicated person or persona, which, unfortunately and ironically requires funds. Although, there are models for getting around that (in a minute on that). However, please don't lump outreach there. Outreach is what we all do on a daily basis -- - Every time someone responds to a desperate new or (ahem) returning user's email as to why MapServer is returning a broken image or why OpenLayers is not working via a proxy, that is outreach. - The hours that Alex and Karsten and others (including, in a very small way, myself) stand at the OSGeo booth talking to visitors, that is outreach. - The countless presentations that I have given all over the world in the past 3 years, mostly as a Creative Commons Fellow, but also talking about OSGeo and free and open source geospatial, that is outreach. - Using pretty much nothing but OSGeo tools for my current largish-money project and converting all my colleagues in academic to appreciating the benefits of OSGeo tools is outreach. Outreach is a fundamentally volunteer and community effort, not requiring a dedicated sales/advertising budget or agency. This is a significant part of the "open" in OSGeo. Hi Puneet, You've got a very good point about what outreach is and I fully agree with you. This is one of the parts of OSGeo that actually goes very very well. Thanks to all community members for their work on that front! I believe that what Michael was alluding to as outreach (perhaps incorrectly) and requiring another set of skills is outreach to larger public and private organizations who have an interest in seeing OSGeo flourish but just don't know it yet... so those people are unlikely to meet you at the booth or listen to one of your talks. Reaching those people requires some marketing work upfront to polish the OSGeo image and message and make it more widely heard, and then one has to wear a suit and knock on their door, discuss their needs and demonstrate how OSGeo can help them... and then walk back with their commitment to support the mission of OSGeo, in the form of public statements combined with $$$. (Did I just describe a sales job?) In my opinion this type of outreach (or whatever we call it) is not well addressed by our community and this is an area where we need new blood to help. This was one of the drivers behind the decision to terminate the ED position. Daniel -- Daniel Morissette http://www.mapgears.com/ Provider of Professional MapServer Support since 2000 ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Report from the OSGeo Board meeting
Michael's response resonates with me the most so I'll start there (included below). I was against this decision and was unsuccessful at convincing others on the board to come around to my point of view. As the votes came around the table it was obvious the decision had been made - I basically abstained with a 0 vote. I feel very strongly that we need an ED to interface with the outside world and stay on top of the day to day operations. I was on the board when we first established the ED position and secured foundation funding through annual sponsors. Unfortunately, we have not been able to sustain the annual sponsorship level. Had we been able to maintain or advance sponsorship we might not be having this conversation. I, and the board, have the utmost respect for Tyler and what he has contributed to our organization. The professionalism that he has shown since this decision came out of the board should serve as an example to us all. In my mind, underlying all of these discussions is financial security and growth. We need to focus on best use of our available financial resources and we need to grow so we can do more. We all want to spread out our financial risk so we are not betting the organization on the success of one annual conference. We want to reach new markets, but we worry if the conference will be a financial success when we go to new uncharted regions. We have begun to discuss regional conferences in additional to the annual international one. I believe we can all agree that in terms of development and projects for OSS Geo we are leading the world. Where I believe there is much room for improvement is on the business and government side. I have been in many one on one discussions with members that feel the OSGeo lacks focus in this area. Most potential sponsors are going to perform a return on investment (ROI) before contributing. As the corporate and government worlds continue to shift towards open source implementations I believe we can present a compelling ROI for strategic sponsorship of OSGeo. I was able to convince RadiantBlue's management to become a platinum sponsor of foss4g based on the shift we are seeing in the government and my case that OSGeo was a world class organization. I'm therefore more than a little concerned that we don't have core staff. We need to have discussions on where we want to go as an organization. Do we continue as a federation of projects and primarily just focus on development? I believe this is our core asset, but think we need to augment it with a focus on business models and help people make livings following our philosophy. Finally, I think we have an enormous amount of potential and talent in our organization and on the board. I think you all can imagine that this decision was a very difficult one. We are all working together to secure the future for the organization. Mark On Sep 21, 2011, at 3:59 AM, Michael P. Gerlek wrote: > Arnulf and Frank have already spoken up, and I think they've captured the > sentiment of Sunday's board decision well. > > To emphasize three points, if I may: > > * Our foundation has been financially backed by a small set of donors and > the FOSS4G conference. We have lost ground on former source, and the latter > source has proven to be extremely volatile. From a business standpoint, > this is not a sustainable path. The ED has been the single largest financial > cost to the foundation, and so given our current funding model, the cost for > the functions performed wasn't justified. > > * I wrote recently that there three kinds of functions needed here: > administrative (bookkeeping, answering mail, etc), tactical (project > management, sys admin), and strategic (fundraising, outreach). The first > can be done by a mixture of outsourcing and volunteers, and we're already > taking steps for that. The second is done already by very competent > volunteers. The third requires a very specific set of skills we will likely > hire or contract out for; in the near term, the board and other non-board > volunteers will shoulder this (as they have been doing for years, though > often unacknowledged). This will be an evolving process, of course, and the > discussion with the community is now underway. > > * There is considerable difficulty in discussing personnel matters with the > community. Some board members have discussed these matters with other > individuals privately, both proactively and reactively, to consider the > foundation's positions and options. However, those were private > discussions: the board cannot discuss personnel issues on a public mailing > list. I'm sure you all can appreciate that. > > Thanks - > > -mpg > > > ___ > Discuss mailing list > Discuss@lists.osgeo.org > http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Report from the OSGeo Board meeting
Michael's response resonates with me the most so I'll start there (included below). I was against this decision and was unsuccessful at convincing others on the board to come around to my point of view. As the votes came around the table it was obvious the decision had been made - I basically abstained with a 0 vote. I feel very strongly that we need an ED to interface with the outside world and stay on top of the day to day operations. I was on the board when we first established the ED position and secured foundation funding through annual sponsors. Unfortunately, we have not been able to sustain the annual sponsorship level. Had we been able to maintain or advance sponsorship we might not be having this conversation. I, and the board, have the utmost respect for Tyler and what he has contributed to our organization. The professionalism that he has shown since this decision came out of the board should serve as an example to us all. In my mind, underlying all of these discussions is financial security and growth. We need to focus on best use of our available financial resources and we need to grow so we can do more. We all want to spread out our financial risk so we are not betting the organization on the success of one annual conference. We want to reach new markets, but we worry if the conference will be a financial success when we go to new uncharted regions. We have begun to discuss regional conferences in additional to the annual international one. I believe we can all agree that in terms of development and projects for OSS Geo we are leading the world. Where I believe there is much room for improvement is on the business and government side. I have been in many one on one discussions with members that feel the OSGeo lacks focus in this area. Most potential sponsors are going to perform a return on investment (ROI) before contributing. As the corporate and government worlds continue to shift towards open source implementations I believe we can present a compelling ROI for strategic sponsorship of OSGeo. I was able to convince RadiantBlue's management to become a platinum sponsor of foss4g based on the shift we are seeing in the government and my case that OSGeo was a world class organization. I'm therefore more than a little concerned that we don't have core staff. We need to have discussions on where we want to go as an organization. Do we continue as a federation of projects and primarily just focus on development? I believe this is our core asset, but think we need to augment it with a focus on business models and help people make livings following our philosophy. Finally, I think we have an enormous amount of potential and talent in our organization and on the board. I think you all can imagine that this decision was a very difficult one. We are all working together to secure the future for the organization. Mark On Sep 21, 2011, at 3:59 AM, Michael P. Gerlek wrote: > Arnulf and Frank have already spoken up, and I think they've captured the > sentiment of Sunday's board decision well. > > To emphasize three points, if I may: > > * Our foundation has been financially backed by a small set of donors and > the FOSS4G conference. We have lost ground on former source, and the latter > source has proven to be extremely volatile. From a business standpoint, > this is not a sustainable path. The ED has been the single largest financial > cost to the foundation, and so given our current funding model, the cost for > the functions performed wasn't justified. > > * I wrote recently that there three kinds of functions needed here: > administrative (bookkeeping, answering mail, etc), tactical (project > management, sys admin), and strategic (fundraising, outreach). The first > can be done by a mixture of outsourcing and volunteers, and we're already > taking steps for that. The second is done already by very competent > volunteers. The third requires a very specific set of skills we will likely > hire or contract out for; in the near term, the board and other non-board > volunteers will shoulder this (as they have been doing for years, though > often unacknowledged). This will be an evolving process, of course, and the > discussion with the community is now underway. > > * There is considerable difficulty in discussing personnel matters with the > community. Some board members have discussed these matters with other > individuals privately, both proactively and reactively, to consider the > foundation's positions and options. However, those were private > discussions: the board cannot discuss personnel issues on a public mailing > list. I'm sure you all can appreciate that. > > Thanks - > > -mpg > > > ___ > Discuss mailing list > Discuss@lists.osgeo.org > http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Report from the OSGeo Board meeting
I thank the Board and all others for discussing this and encourage others to join in. It sounds like we will all have plenty of opportunity to contribute to the OSGeo vision and tasks. Arnulf asked for clarification on something that I wrote, >> From paying attention to Board traffic, it was apparent that OSGeo is >> maturing as an organization and would need to make changes and I >> suppose that I didn't really get that involved since no changes are >> easier to react to than significant changes. It seems that changes >> like this will require a more clear articulation of a plan than >> keeping everything the same (which really didn't require any >> articulation). > > True. Do you want to say that one good thing of this move was to > potentially shock the community into action? > >> Sorry for holding you to a higher standard for making >> changes. > > Not sure what this exactly means, maybe you can explain. What I meant by this was that when the Board takes little or no major action I require no justification at all. However, when the Board does take some major action, then I give them 20 questions. I recognize that it is not fair to hold the Board to a higher standard just because they are making major decisions. I still wanted the questions answered so I asked the questions anyway even knowing that it was not necessarily fair. Since I knowingly did something that I thought was not necessarily fair, I apologized. And once again, thanks to the Board and others for discussing this. Best Regards, Eli >>> On 9/21/2011 at 8:10 AM, in message <8302e622-d0e2-4e4d-aade-1e6797399...@me.com>, Mark Lucas wrote: > Michael's response resonates with me the most so I'll start there (included > below). > > I was against this decision and was unsuccessful at convincing others on the > board to come around to my point of view. As the votes came around the table > it was obvious the decision had been made - I basically abstained with a 0 > vote. > > I feel very strongly that we need an ED to interface with the outside world > and stay on top of the day to day operations. I was on the board when we > first established the ED position and secured foundation funding through > annual sponsors. Unfortunately, we have not been able to sustain the annual > sponsorship level. Had we been able to maintain or advance sponsorship we > might not be having this conversation. > > I, and the board, have the utmost respect for Tyler and what he has > contributed to our organization. The professionalism that he has shown since > this decision came out of the board should serve as an example to us all. > > In my mind, underlying all of these discussions is financial security and > growth. We need to focus on best use of our available financial resources > and we need to grow so we can do more. We all want to spread out our > financial risk so we are not betting the organization on the success of one > annual conference. We want to reach new markets, but we worry if the > conference will be a financial success when we go to new uncharted regions. > We have begun to discuss regional conferences in additional to the annual > international one. > > I believe we can all agree that in terms of development and projects for OSS > Geo we are leading the world. > > Where I believe there is much room for improvement is on the business and > government side. > > I have been in many one on one discussions with members that feel the OSGeo > lacks focus in this area. Most potential sponsors are going to perform a > return on investment (ROI) before contributing. As the corporate and > government worlds continue to shift towards open source implementations I > believe we can present a compelling ROI for strategic sponsorship of OSGeo. > I was able to convince RadiantBlue's management to become a platinum sponsor > of foss4g based on the shift we are seeing in the government and my case that > OSGeo was a world class organization. I'm therefore more than a little > concerned that we don't have core staff. > > We need to have discussions on where we want to go as an organization. Do > we continue as a federation of projects and primarily just focus on > development? I believe this is our core asset, but think we need to augment > it with a focus on business models and help people make livings following our > philosophy. > > Finally, I think we have an enormous amount of potential and talent in our > organization and on the board. I think you all can imagine that this > decision was a very difficult one. We are all working together to secure the > future for the organization. > > Mark > > > > > On Sep 21, 2011, at 3:59 AM, Michael P. Gerlek wrote: > >> Arnulf and Frank have already spoken up, and I think they've captured the >> sentiment of Sunday's board decision well. >> >> To emphasize three points, if I may: >> >> * Our foundation has been financiall
