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 <gsher...@geoapt.com> 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