On Sat, 2008-09-20 at 06:12 -0700, Steve Foerster wrote:
There is a separate Google group that was set up for the Interim Int'l
Advisory Committee. With that precedent set, we could set up a new
Google group where Council members are signed up. This Google group
should be publicly accessible, as befits a Council that represents a
wider community.
Unless someone offers an alternative suggestion for a forum, I will
set this up in two days' time so that we can move on to appointing the
remaining ten members of the Council.
Steve, Wow -- the community has certainly elected the right folk --
you're already at the grindstone moving things forward :-).
Yes -- I think a Google group is a good idea to keep the Council
connected. We may need to think about an alternative technologies for
meetings, taking into account the policy requirements for maintaining a
quorum and procedures for resolutions.
I've started of a page for the Community Council in the wiki to start
thinking about the agendas and road map for getting the full council
operational.
http://wikieducator.org/WikiEducator:Community_Council
You're right the first step is to think about nominations. The policy
requires us:
to include members with a diverse set of talents, experience, and
competencies, and who will best fulfill the mission and needs of
WikiEducator and
to determine the rules for the composition of nominated members to
ensure that the Council:
* achieves an equitable representation from the different regions
of the world;
* achieves an equal voice for developing countries when compared
to representation from industrialised countries;
* achieves gender equality;
* ensures that the interests of major funders of the WikiEducator
project are adequately represented in the composition of
Council;
* upholds the Commonwealth values;
Once you've set up the Group for the Council, the first request we
should post is for one-page resume of each Council member with headings
for: Nationality and place of residence; Qualifications; and
Chronological summary of professional experience. This will help us map
the tapestry of skills and experience of the elected members, but also
highlight any gaps we have in our collective experience. We should post
these to the Community Council page above.
Looking at the results, I think the democratic process has achieved a
good result. There is a good geographic spread:
Asia -- 3
Pacific - 4
Africa - 2
Europe - 1
North America Caribbean 5
We have a good spread between developing and industrialised countries.
We're fortunate to have four experienced woman leaders among our elected
members. However, I'm concerned about the male gender bias on our
elected Council. So we need think proactively about our nominations --
preferably woman leaders with experience in education and a commitment
to the peer collaboration model of OER when filling our skills gaps on
Council. Perhaps we also need to think about a dedicated Gender officer
on the Council to help our community in promoting gender equality.
Looking at the composition of our elected members -- we should think
about the following gaps:
1) Expertise in managing large open projects -- eg someone from the
Wikimedia Foundation (WMF). WikiEducator has a good track record in
collaborating with the WMF (eg wiki-print and Kaltura) and I would
personally like to foster and promote ongoing collaboration among our
respective projects.
2) Legal expertise, eg someone from the Berkman Centre for Internet and
Society @ Harvard, http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/ ?
3) Strategically the relationships between OER and the publishing
industry will become increasingly important, and I think that it would
be important to have someone with relevant experience in educational
publishing;
4) Copyright and licensing will continue to be a challenge in the OER
arena, and I think that the Executive Director of CC-Learn could add
considerable value and expertise to our team. (Assuming of course that
he'd be willing to serve.)
5) We are very thin on representation of the OER interests in the school
(K12) sector.
6) What about the other big OER projects that subscribe to the free
cultural works definition, eg Connexions? The OER movement needs to
figure out better ways to work together.
Just a few initial thoughts
Cheers
Wayne
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