Hi all, It has been great to see the new contributors and partners joining in the past year, bringing their contributions, enthusiasm, competences, uses and support, and all the great things that were done, and that will continue. This can be read about in more details in several other places.
But something less positive also happened, that I feel necessary to share with you. For the first time, in 2014, the fifth year of my personal commitment in OSM in the context of humanitarian crises (since Haiti 2010 earthquake), I have witnessed a deliberately taken decision, apparently supported by the previous HOT Board (or at least a majority within it), that resulted in our collective help, through mapping, to health and humanitarian actors that were struggling to save lives in West Africa not being quite as efficient as it could have been, at certain times and places. Deliberately obstructing use of valuable resources. The only explanation I can find is that some interest, whether personal, economical or political, got precedence over the general interest. And I think that's wrong. And that volunteer contributors deserve to hear about it, even as succinctly as above. I'd like to remind something that may tend to be easily forgotten. Persons who happen to be at the interface between the contributors community and the partners and general public, are important (and rightfully honored, recognized, valued, etc...) but not more than other members of the community. If 1000 contribute to an activation, each with their time, knowledge, skills, intelligence, network, etc... from a human point of view, all are important. This is also true if, instead of a human point of view, you had rather look at it from an economical or financial point of view. Budget amounts in a few millions USD may look huge in comparison to a volunteer's contribution. But think of the global value of OSM community work, accumulated and improved over the years. If you look at the market prize of roughly equivalent enterprises, it could be estimated to at least a few billions USD. So again, the order of magnitude, or scale, we are looking at is less than a thousandth. So who should be on the board of the organization that presents itself (especially towards the outside) as representing the OSM community for humanitarian actors? It is ok if there is no requirement of volunteer OSM contributors to be on the Board of humanitarian organizations for them to partner with HOT. The contrary might of course look surprising, as some of them can be much bigger that HOT. Yet this does not prevent them from partnering with HOT. It might be fine too if a few representatives of partners, or of people who sometimes work for HOT or for related organizations, are members of the Board, as their presence can make internal discussions easier. But the crucial point is that there should be at least a majority of volunteer contributors (not necessarily mappers in the technical sense, but in the sense of representatives of the community of “volunteer contributors”, whatever their mode of contribution and field, whether mapping, training, field work, communication, fund-raising, etc...), and, what is more, able to think independently of even powerful external partners with strong influence (i.e. for example able not resist “spin”, and not let their decisions be based on misleading representations of reality). This is a requirement for all the volunteer contributors, who are generally recognized to be the most important “component” of OSM, to have a least some chance of a fair representation (that they do not have elsewhere for the humanitarian field, unlike partner organizations who are already strongly structured). Of course, other competencies than mapping are valuable and recognized. But people could also bring them without needing to have a dominant position at the Board. The most important role of the Board, the one no-one else should play in its place, it to set the cursor at the right position when it is needed to make a decision between differing interests. And if it is not independent enough, it will tend to favor external interests with the most influence, whose natural role is to promote themselves. That the various interests linked to HOT US Inc. should be under independent internal control is a basic rule of sound governance. The volunteer contributors can be fooled once, or a few times, but won't be forever, and, after a while, when they figure that things aren't organized as they should be, they'll move on, to give their contributions, good will, time, and intelligence to other projects that they'll find more relevant for their vision of the general interest, or more soundly organized. The motto of the OSM Foundation, “Support but not control” the community, should not just be an empty slogan, but a reality, for HOT too, a necessary condition to allow the role of OSM in the humanitarian field to reach its full potential (and not just provide "free or cheap labor" for the privileged benefit of a few). (Maybe a way to think about it “spatially” would be for those who play these roles to think about themselves as “under”, rather than “above” the community – as traditional hierarchical organizations are often thought about). If you feel that this resonates with you, and encourages you to propose your candidacy to the Board, then this message will not have been useless. There are already some good candidates, but more are needed. Especially of course if you would enrich the also needed diversity. (I had written this before seeing Nama's candidacy – great! - impressive work what was done in Nepal). Best wishes, Jean-Guilhem _______________________________________________ HOT mailing list [email protected] https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/hot
