On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 4:17 PM, Cameron Shorter <[email protected]>wrote:
> Hi Adrian and Jeff, > Your points are very similar to those raised in April -> June 2012 [1] > when discussing the concept of "OSGeo Advocate" (previously referred to as > "OSGeo Ambassador"). > > [1] http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/discuss/2012-May/thread.html > > There is a tension between people wishing an exclusive "label" or "badge" > which easily identifies a level of expertise and community recognition, > verses a desire to be inclusive of everyone who applies. > Adrian / Cameron, I just wanted to stress that there is also a "responsible governance" role for charter members. They exist in order to be a representative body representing our community. They are responsible for selecting the board and more broadly to ensure that the organization isn't intentionally or accidentally subverted by some other interest group. Somewhat hypothetically imagine if all the students (of all types) at a university got nominated. Or if we had some money in the bank, and advocates of some charity had the clever idea of nominating 1000 members so they could redirect our funds into their mission. So some degree of limitations on charter membership election aren't just about maintaining some exclusivity for status purposes. They are to avoid the organization being derailed from it's mission to easily. I am personally in favor of allowing a fairly large number of charter members, but also of de-emphasizing the distinction between charter members and all the rest of our membership and community. Charter member is a *mechanism* to keep the organization reasonably representative but not otherwise (imho) supposed to be important. Best regards, -- ---------------------------------------+-------------------------------------- I set the clouds in motion - turn up | Frank Warmerdam, [email protected] light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam and watch the world go round - Rush | Geospatial Software Developer
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