On 11-Aug-07, at 7:51 AM, P Kishor wrote:
On 8/10/07, Steve Lime <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hi all: Perhaps this has been discussed before, but... Given the
apparent desire to maintain geographic diversity amongst OSgeo
leadership perhaps in the future we might consider regionally
based board seats.
This is absolutely the most wonderful, workable, and simplest idea to
this problem.
I'm not convinced that enforced geographic distribution at the board
level is the best, though I acknowledge the value of the diversity
and the need to make the organisation sensitive to particular
geographic needs.
Implementing a geographically diverse board may be truly hard and is
quite arbitrary. I believe local chapters would need to develop
further first, so they would provide the nominees or choose who would
represent them on a board. However, it pre-supposes that there are
leaders available in all regions, that they are the best (however you
define that) to lead the organisation and that those leaders are even
involved in a local chapter. Will this always be the case? It's
pretty hard to say...
Distributed geographic representation sounds good to us because we
know geography is important - but it is still as arbitrary as saying
we need equal representation from business vs. academia, or
programmers vs. hobbyists, or distribution of languages, etc.
Instead, I would suggest something like an international congress
that is made up of the chair of each local chapter, plus the main
board. It would be the OSGeo UN and meet several times per year,
with decisions guiding final board decisions. It would be an ideal
way of having interaction between local chapters and the main
organisation that might not otherwise happen. This allows more
people to become known and their leadership potential recognised more
broadly. It would be natural to that some members of the congress
would end up running for board positions in the future.
This is just some rough brainstorming, please don't take it too
seriously, but thought I'd share some of my personal reflections on
the topic.
Tyler
_______________________________________________
Discuss mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
