Board/Minutes/2020-10-S2S/Board transparency

From OpenStreetMap Foundation

e.g via Communications Working Group

Notes by participants. Might be enriched.

This session took place in parallel with "OSMF fundraising". A summary was provided to the other group.

Participants

Board members

  • Tobias Knerr (host)
  • Joost Schouppe
  • Paul Norman

The rest of the board members participated in the parallel session "OSMF fundraising".

Biographies.

Notes

  • current state with transparency is generally decent, there are some areas we could work on.
  • our way of extending the conversation to the community is a bit one-sided -> can we do more to make the community part of it?
  • when we take stuff public early, the conversation is sometimes low value; osmf-talk can be draining.
  • Discourse transition would help with communications (technical reasons, more modern UI, ...)
  • consultations, emails (unsubscribe possible?)
  • closed mid-month chats.
    • not strictly new (was on private email + IRC before).
    • maybe offer access to observers (like microgrants committee) -> no consensus.
    • there is some desire among board members to be able to say stupid things in private.
  • public meetings work pretty well.
  • improve perceived transparency by spreading already-public info from documents (minutes etc.) that few people actually read to more accessible formats (blog posts, ...) -> Get Communication Working Group (CWG) could help?
  • risk that doing more in the same time overwhelms attention of members.

Decisions

  • Express board's support for migration of forum.osm.org to Discourse.
  • Start using the OSMF subforum for consultations once the migration has happened.
  • Get Communication Working Group (CWG) help in more engaging communications -> bring this up in the upcoming board+CWG meeting.