Board/Minutes/2017-08-24

Location: Mumble, Thursday 2017-08-24, 20:00 London time

The recurring date and time of the monthly board meetings has changed!

Participants

Board members

Peter Barth
Kate Chapman (Chair)
Mikel Maron
Frederik Ramm
Ilya Zverev

Guests

Open to all members

Guests are welcome to speak at the end of the meeting on the topics that have been discussed. Please note that text messages sent on Mumble chat may not be seen by people who join using mobile apps.

Not Present

Paul Norman
Martijn van Exel

Administrative

Previous minutes

Board/Minutes/2017-07-18 Accepted

Circular Resolutions

2017/5: Pay for Dorothea's travel to SotM, as per SotM-WG's request

2017/5: Pay for Dorothea's travel to SotM, as per SotM-WG's request
The State of the Map Organizing Committee has asked the board to cover Dorothea's costs to attend State of the Map 2017. Benefits stated were direct (support the scholars, sign up new OSMF members, take minutes at the Local Chapters Congress) and indirect (help build relationship with our sponsors).
Accepted 2017-08-05 with ultimately 4 votes in favour: Frederik Ramm, Peter Barth, Kate Chapman, Mikel Maron Abstained 3: Paul Norman, Ilya Zverev, Martijn van Exel

Previous action items

2016-05-28: Martijn to find someone to work with to distil action items and next steps for diversity objectives
2016-05-28: Martijn/Kate to draft diversity policy
2016-05-28: ~~Ilya to compile a draft of an OSMF monthly newsletter from Working Group (WG) & board minutes~~ (will be removed after request)
2016-05-28: Frederik/Paul to prepare transparency doc from transparency session
2016-08-19: Mikel to send round bullet points on diversity policy proposal
2016-08-19: Ilya to look at implementing means for members to view the membership register
2016-09-25: Martijn to notify board when US has done policy on smaller grants
2016-10-28: Peter to create a page on the wiki, listing software products which are used by OSMF and aren't open-source
2017-02-21: Paul to separate the State of the Map (SotM) net profit discussion items and start the follow-up discussions
2017-04-18: Peter to make a list of requirements for self-hosting and discuss them with the OWG
2017-06-20: Martijn to draft message to HOT board about having a seat on the Advisory Board upfront & ask if the current Corporate Membership levels are ok or if they want a discount

Geocoding guideline - voting

Accept the Geocoding guideline
The Licensing Working Group has sent the current draft (3rd of August) of the Geocoding Guideline to the board for approval as an official policy of the OSMF. Any substantial input from Advisory Board members can be incorporated to a later revision, if necessary. Related updates: July 2017, June 2017.''
Accepted 2017-08-24 with ultimately 5 votes in favour: Kate Chapman, Frederik Ramm, Ilya Zverev, Peter Barth, Mikel Maron

State of the Map 2017 - Debrief

The State of the Map (SotM) conference is the annual conference of OpenStreetMap and this year took place in Aizu-Wakamatsu, Japan. (OSM wiki)

Organisation on the Working Group level: run well
Scholars: all got visas
Workload during conference: Rob & Gregory did a lot of work to solve issues that arose the first days - which can arise regardless the preparation.
Diversity workshop: Some take-outs can be implemented. Maybe we can alter the welcome message when someone joins a mailing list and enforce some rules better - e.g. have a person as a contact point in a mailing list, including those lists that don't have active moderators.

Local Chapter Congress (the draft minutes are here)

90 minutes of people talking about things they find interesting.
Revisited the results from last year, there was not much progress.
Many problems shared, some unique.
Decision to continue discussions on a mailing list.
Interesting point: In the Democratic Republic of the Congo there is difficulty dealing with the authorities as OSM gets equalled with political activism. This is because in other countries OSMers are also involved with human rights campaigns.

Next State of the Map conference (in Milan): It will be organised by the SotM WG together with two local teams, one from the local institute and one from OSM-It/Wikimedia Italy.

Action item: Kate to contact Michael about closing inactive mailing lists that she is an admin of.

German Local Chapter application

FOSSGIS will apply to become the OSMF Local Chapter for Germany. Previous discussion: July 2017.

Submitted by Frederik, as a board member of FOSSGIS.
Submission not complete as lacking tax returns, should have all the rest of the required documents.
Frederik has contacted the German community to ask if there are objections. We could write to the German mailing list and ask for feedback, as it was done for the French application.

Action item: Frederik to follow up with Martijn regarding the German Local Chapter application.

Welcome Mat progress - next steps

The Welcome Mat will be a guide to organisations and corporations that want to be involved with OSM. It will have information to familiarise themselves with the project, the community and especially to learn our expectations and their responsibilities. Previous discussion: July 2017. The Welcome Mat was proposed during the Face-to-Face board meeting in May. Please note that the name might change.

Mikel has created a concept note, sent to the Advisory Board - no feedback yet.

Action item: Mikel to send email on the list to find businesses who would like to offer input on the Welcome Mat.

Volunteer drive progress - next steps

The OSM Foundation runs successful money donation drives but money cannot always be used to buy time. So, we really need more volunteers to help run our project, which is why we will run a volunteer drive next year. If you can’t wait that long, you can join one of our great working groups now! The Volunteer drive was proposed during the Face-to-Face board meeting in May.

The Volunteer Drive was scheduled for next year, but we would have to start now, communicating the idea and giving the Working Groups time to formulate tasks.
The tasks decided at the previous Face-to-Face meeting are moving slowly.

Decision: Take the Volunteer Drive on when there is more time. Progress with the Face to Face tasks in the order that they have been planned.

Membership drive progress - next steps

Members are vital to our project and we welcome all who support our goals to join us. We will run a Membership drive to increase the number of members and -as importantly- to try to increase the representation from all places where people are mapping. Consider joining the Foundation, especially if you belong to an under-represented group. The Membership drive was proposed during the Face-to-Face board meeting in May.

The Membership Drive will probably consist of a series of communication pieces and possibly related discussions on mailing lists.
One of the potential mailing lists might be the Local Chapter one, which might be re-started with the participation of people who attended the recent Local Chapter Congress at SotM2017. (update: the LC mailing list has been restarted)
Official Local Chapters probably have their own membership schemes.

Leads: Mikel with Ilya or Martijn. The MWG and the CWG will also be involved.

Any other business

Adding status to the action items

This was briefly mentioned during the action item discussion. It was suggested by an OSMF member and was discussed by the board via email.

Question about any decision on microgrants

No decision.

Action item: Kate to write to the Advisory Board list about microgrants.

Next meeting

The recurring date and time of the monthly board meetings has changed! Meetings will now take place on the 3rd Thursday of the month, at 21:00 London time, unless rescheduled.

The next monthly board meeting will be on the 21st of September, at 21:00 London time.

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