Board/Minutes/2015-07-20

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DRAFT MINUTES for the

OSMF Board Meeting

Location: Mumble, Monday 20 July 2015

Public meeting recording is at http://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/File:2015-07-20-public-meeting.mp3

Participants

Board members

  • Kate Chapman (chair)
  • Paul Norman (minutes)
  • Frederik Ramm
  • Henk Hoff
  • Kathleen Danielson

Guests

Meeting open to public, unrecorded attendees.

Not Present

  • Dermot McNally
  • Oliver Kühn

Administrative

Previous minutes

http://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Board/Minutes/2015-06-15

Accepted

A meeting was attempted 2015-07-05 bit did not meet quorum with only Frederik, Henk, and Paul attending.

Circular Resolutions

Circular Resolution 2015/03: Ban policy changes

Accepted on ?? with ultimately 5 votes in favour.

To accept the Data Working Group recommendations for minor ban policy changes for clarity and to keep up with changes to the openstreetmap.org software.

Changes are shown at http://wiki.osmfoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Ban_Policy&diff=3305&oldid=2634

Uncertain on exact date, and not sure how to get it from Loomio.

Previous action items

2015-02-16: Henk to find board members to peruse each 2015 goal (Done)
2015-04-03: Kathleen to have advisory board proposal for 2015-07-20 meeting
2015-05-09: Henk to have plan by next meeting for moving forwards and any costs for customizing CiviCRM (Done)
2015-06-15: Henk to talk to Martijn about coordinating use of SOTM US signups and drafting a joint email.
2015-06-15: Henk to talk to SOTM US organizers about sending a follow-up email to all attendees
2015-06-15: Paul to coordinate with HOT over use of Mumble for public meeting(Done)
2015-??-??: Kate to email Management Team thanking them for service.

SOTM US signup email (signups on paper)

Henk spoken to OSM US, sent text, but email hadn't gone out. Henk to follow up.

SOTM US email to all

OSM US hasn't gotten back.

US group has sent out an email asking for feedback, but not involving signup. henk to check status, but might be too late to send an email about joining to all people

Insurance

Now have coverage for cases brought in the US.

Polling/surveying members

  • Also how we can get more people to participate in the OSMF and WGs
  • To figure out what is keeping people from participating. Are they willing? What's keeping them? What type of things do they think they can help us?
  • Like to see some more direction on where we're going to take the foundation, particularly about the 60/20/20 funding split principle, after a survey from ~2008. What do we want to be doing for taking on increased funding
  • Some have the idea that these should be decided by the board and members can elect new board members to set new direction, but also the Swiss democracy idea involving polling. Need to find a sweet spot between the two extremes.
  • Need to design questions in a way that the results of the survey are open
  • Could have two parts, one aggregated, but also an invitation for people to share things they would rather not have publicized. Can contact board any time, but but they're already engaging at the time by filling out survey
  • Could do open-ended questions, but not very quantifiable. Standard survey questions allow for more reporting out
  • Would it technically fit into the civicrm platform?
  • Need to do research into how to do a survey and get people to fill it in
  • Using CiviCRM allows tie-in to membership lists
  • Someone should take responsibility for organizing the survey, but the board doesn't need to do all of it. Asking for a volunteer from the membership list might be a start

Questions from the membership

No questions.

Corporate membership program

Start at 12:45

No updates from Kate.

Kate to look at how costing is broken out. Doing it by benefit level may make more sense than by company size.

Next is ask the board and community for more input

Are we going to be able to get this done in time for a resolution at AGM to change fees?

Could change the corporate fees so that the board can set them without an ordinary resolution since corporate members don't have votes.

Questions from the membership

AGM 2015

Start at 16:15

We need to decide when and how to hold our next AGM.

At the next election there shall be at least two retirees, one of whom is Henk and the other is one of Oliver, Dermot, or Kate. (AoA 33-34). Absent one of these three deciding to retire, it shall be randomly selected.

Additional board members may decide to retire.

Frederik suggested an online-based AGM in Autumn.

Kate has list of questions to send to Francis (lawyer).

Also open question on if we wanted to ask a question on term limits in some revised form, and clarifying the length of a board member's term.

Term length

Staggering and early retirement add complications to clarity of length of term.

Term limits

Limiting the maximum number of terms someone can be on for the board.

More than 50% of members were in favour of term limits, but not enough for AOA change threshold.

Kate to ask questions of Francis.

Questions from membership

Michael K: please consider the discussion

Andy: Why not elect every board member every year?

The US board does that, which has worked well for them, but risk of complete board turnover which is tricky for institutional memory.

HOT has yearly board elections and is looking to spread them out and stagger them. HOT board responsible for more than OSM US, and people feel like they're running every year.

Every year can be draining.

AOA allow the board to add extra members, but only until next election.

Michael K: Over half the membership voted in favour of term limits.

There may have been people who voted yes because they thought the board put the resolution forward. May not have been clear how the foundation works and that the resolution was not from the board.

Alex: From OSM US perspective, it almost doesn't matter right now. If no switching friction, would recommend two years.

AOB

Budget stuff?

Request from LWG to go slightly over budget, and allowed.

Could theoretically think about starting to put together a budget for next year, but ties in to fund raising plan.

Hiring admin help

Idea was to hire someone to work from for 1-2 days/week, mainly helping board, maybe helping WGs later. Organize stuff, set up meetings, tracking todos, research (e.g. find insurance offers).

Small budget set for 2nd half 2015, could start looking for people to fill that role

Typ. start by writing position description. Frederik wrote and sent around one after F2F, but probably requires some improvement.

Feedback on list was

  • Some people working in smaller groups was anything <2d/weeks is not worth it, too much bother. Others said 1d/week worked well

Frederik to resend draft.

Michael K: Sounds reasonable to have someone who triggers meetings, writes minutes, reminds members to take care of tasks

Comment (unknown): I strongly doubt is giving up no paid employees rule.

We have a paid accountant, so are already paying an expert to do work we would otherwise have to do ourselves.

Comment (unknown): Admin staff is a great idea, will help with continuity, and allow board/wgs to focus on strategic work.

Wouldn't hope institutional cont. would depend on someone paid for 1d/week

Important to be distinct between the project and the foundation. OSM is still volunteer, but the foundation may involve paid work.

A lot of the stuff we can do on

Comment (unknown): OSM as a whole depends on volunteers doing things without being paid.

OSM and OSMF are distinct. We're not looking to pay someone for the fun things.

No people are stepping forward who find this stuff fun.

Comment (unknown): It's not about the project or getting stuff mapped, but about running the foundation


Steps

Frederik to re-circulate description. Asking for feedback from membership next step.

Next meeting

4 weeks. Paul to send Doodle.

Thanks

Thanks for all members for turning up.

Meeting End

46 minutes on recording