Board/Minutes/2022-10

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Draft minutes.

Date and time: Thursday 27 October 2022, 13:00 UTC - Countdown

The topics of the agenda got locked one week before the meeting.

Location: Video room https://osmvideo.cloud68.co/user/ror-nt7-6tu
using BigBlueButton.

Acronyms

Participants

Board members

  • Eugene Alvin Villar (Chairing)
  • Jean-Marc Liotier
  • Mikel Maron
  • Amanda McCann
  • Roland Olbricht
  • Tobias Knerr

Officers and board
Biographies

Minutes by Dorothea Kazazi.

Not Present

  • Guillaume Rischard

Guests

  • 9 guests, including Ibrahima Cisse

Open to all OSMF members.

You are welcome to ask questions or to comment (via voice or on the chat) at the end of the meeting.

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Administrative

Previous minutes

Circular Resolutions

2022/Res25 Approve active contributor membership application #2022092310000096

The Board currently decides on active contributor membership applications based on non-mapping contributions on a case-by-case basis.

Approved on 2022-10-05 with 5 votes in favour: Mikel Maron, Tobias Knerr, Amanda McCann, Eugene Alvin Villar, Roland Olbricht.
2 did not vote: Guillaume Rischard, Jean-Marc Liotier.

Application initially processed by the Membership Working Group.

2022/Res26 Approve active contributor membership application #2022092210000141

The Board currently decides on active contributor membership applications based on non-mapping contributions on a case-by-case basis.

Approved on 2022-10-05 with 4 votes in favour: Mikel Maron, Tobias Knerr, Eugene Alvin Villar, Roland Olbricht.
3 did not vote: Amanda McCann, Guillaume Rischard, Jean-Marc Liotier.

Application initially processed by the Membership Working Group.

2022/Res27 Approve active contributor membership application #2022092510000216

The Board currently decides on active contributor membership applications based on non-mapping contributions on a case-by-case basis.

Voting closes on 2022-10-05. The application was withdrawn by the MWG as a duplicate of #2022090710000125.

Application initially processed by the Membership Working Group.

2022/Res28 Offer financial support to the Center for Urban Justice (ZUG)

This circular resolution is to offer Center for Urban Justice (aka ZUG) a grant of €1000 in response to their request for financial support. (cf. email from ZUG 18 July 2022, and board email 20 Sept 2022).

Approved on 2022-10-20 with 4 votes in favour:
- Jean-Marc Liotier
- Eugene Alvin Villar (While this sort of funding is unprecedented, I can see that this sort of initiative has some overlap with OSM and can actually be helpful for the project and open geodata in general if the legal action succeeds. While I was uncomfortable with the originally requested amount, I think €1000 would be a good amount.),
- Guillaume Rischard (They’re fighting for open geographical data in Luxembourg. The case is relevant to OSM.)
- Amanda McCann (There are pro's & con's to this idea. I'm uncertain, but it's important to support this sort of cause).
3 votes against:
- Roland Olbricht (While the cause is honorable, it is in the end too far off the mission of then OSMF. After re-reading the context, the aim is to fix bad zebra crossings and to collect very specific data with respect to these zebra crossings. The data has already before been collected by the ZUG in a more OSM style way by collecting the data from survey, and the request is part of an initiative to stop a misguided mitigation attempt and not so much to free data.),
- Mikel Maron (Supportive of open data efforts, but financial support for legal actions on open data is new and needs more consideration.),
- Tobias Knerr (There isn't really a precedent for supporting this kind of initiative financially. I would prefer to gauge the mood of the community through public discussion before taking a decision that implies a policy shift. I'm also a bit wary about the being seen as partisan wrt political causes: Would we support information freedom requests by advocates for a cause we're not sympathetic with?)

Circular by Amanda McCann.

Notes:

Action item updates

See osm:Foundation/Board_action_items.

General comments

  • Appreciation of Amanda's documentation on the board's Gitlab issue tracker.
  • Suggestion to reassign action items of retiring board members after the Annual General Meeting in December.
  • Request for retiring board members to update the board's Gitlab issue tracker.

On Membership Working Group

The Membership Working Group (MWG) is currently behind on implementing board decisions, as:

  • expanding the active contributor membership to normal members (change of online sign-up form).
  • installing membership prerequisites.

Other points mentioned

  • The Membership Working Group is aware.
  • Board election: Change of membership status was necessary for some of the board candidates. This has already been completed by the Membership Working Group.

Treasurer's report

State of the Map 2022

Background
The international State of the Map 2022 conference took place in Florence, Italy and online. See the programme and videos of the talks.

Fundraising workshops

Background
Series of fundraising workshops provided for free to board members by AspirationTech - which has been recurringly contracted by the board to facilitate past face-to-face/screen-to-screen board meetings. Allen Gunn of AspirationTech is a member of the OSMF Finance Committee.

Previous board discussions:

Update by Mikel Maron

  • Second-to-last meeting was on Monday.
  • Latest meetings: focused on tactical/operational aspects (e.g. recurring donations or going for larger donations with bigger organisations).

Next step: Board members who attended will share a write-up with the Finance Committee and more broadly.

Evaluation of the Software dispute resolution panel for iD and appointment or reappointment of members with expiring terms

  • There's not a lot of work needed to be done right now.

On suggestion of asking the current Software dispute resolution panel (SDRP) members to continue

  • If there are no complaints from the SDRP members about work or absence of work, they could continue.
  • If some SDRP members are not willing to continue, the next board can appoint new people.

Action item: The Secretary to email the Software dispute resolution panel asking if they are willing to continue serving on the panel.

Membership prerequisites survey

Tobias shared survey draft with the board and incorporated the feedback.

Pending tasks

  • Compile list of osmf-members emails. This can be done by the Membership Working Group (MWG) and board members in the MWG or having access to CiviCRM (membership database).
  • Arrange translations with the volunteer translators of the Communication Working Group (CWG), if the survey is going to be available in other languages.

Action item: Dorothea to compile the list of OSM Foundation members' email addresses.

On survey timing

  • Good to have the survey before the Annual General Meeting.
  • If we keep survey open for long, it might get more responses, but it might overlap with the pre-election session.

Other point mentioned

  • It's within the remit of the board to use the OSMF members' email addresses to survey them regarding OSMF issues.

On translations

Target languages: Depends on whether there are volunteer translators for various languages and they have free time.

Decisions

  • Ask volunteers translators to help - wait for one week for the translations.
  • Board members can volunteer to translate in their native languages.
  • Survey will run for two weeks.

Post-meeting additions: The survey has been sent to OSMF members. Copy of questions in English. Page on the OSM wiki about OSMF surveys.

Advisory Board - monthly update

No update.

Monthly presentation: Open Mapping Hub - West and Northern Africa

Open Mapping Hub - West and Northern Africa launch

Presentation

Questions

Data quality

Question by Mikel Maron on data quality: How are you all been thinking about data quality, what type of quality assessment processes you have instituted when you do mapping projects?

> First step: organising training session.
> Other processes during validation, with the support of the HOT data team.
> No data specialists on the team yet - trying to get one.
> Also talking about extracting information and sharing it with the community to advocate and better explain our impact.

Location

Question by Amanda McCann on the location of Ibrahima Cisse.

> In Dakar, Senegal.

State of the Map 2023 decision

Question by Amanda McCann on any thoughts and feedback about the recent situation related to the State of the Map 2023 decision.

> Will support the team that will have the opportunity to host the conference.
> Preparing an interesting program next year (forum) and hoping to invite teams that have developed projects to present and try to push champions.

Quality of AI detection provided by Microsoft

Question by Eugene Villar on how good is the quality of AI detection which was provided by Microsoft.

> Trying to have field work to really complete and ensure the final result is much more correct.
> Discussions with data team on how the improve the work.

Engaging with non-OSM organisations

Question by Jean-Marc Liotier: when you reach out to local communities - is that specific to OSM communities/organisations or do you also contact/engage with organisations that are not OSM? (local governments/Non-governmental organisations)

> First step: Small survey and a lot of discussions with OSM mappers and community to get feedback, context and challenges.
> Then identify most dynamic OSM communities - but also have other mapping communities.
> At the launch of OSM Senegal, local communities were invited to participate and discuss.
> Will open grants for mapping cities and capitals, which will be open also to mappers not typically in OSM.

Collaboration with the Eastern Africa hub

Question by Eugene Villar on collaboration of the West and Northern Africa Open Mapping Hub with the Eastern Africa hub.

> There is collaboration - for example the satellite imagery project for Kenya and Nigeria. Currently collaboratively drafting the report.
> Thinking about having a big project, which is more integrative for Africa.

Any other business

No other business.

Guest comments or questions

Advice for board candidates

Question by Ariel Kadouri (guest and candidate for the 2022 board election) on any advice for candidates running for the board.

  • Choose and focus on 1-2 things, try to not spread too thin.
  • What matters ultimately is not the manifestos and positions but effectiveness - there is no much disagreement within the board about what needs to get done.
  • Show the membership that you are sincere, want to help and want to make OSM succeed - will help engagment with the voters.
  • Most work is remote, so when you publish things you might feel that you're speaking alone, but actually people who you might have not even met will read what you write and know what you're doing. Don't be intimidated by the loneliness of the remote community interactions.
  • Don't be afraid of writing, because that's what actually impacts.
  • If you don't get elected, try again and think about joining a working group.
    • Comment by Eugene that he run twice for the board, before getting elected.

Next meetings

10 November - closed chat

25 November - public board meeting

Open board meetings take place online once a month, usually on the 3rd or 4th Thursday of the month, at 13:00 UTC.

See the Monthly Board meetings page to find out where board meetings are announced and for a subscription link to have future board meetings automatically added to your calendar.

10 December - 16th Annual General Meeting

The 16th Annual General Meeting of the OpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF) will be held online in the IRC chat room #osmf-gm on the IRC network irc.oftc.net, on Saturday 10 December 2022, 16:00 UTC (countdown).

Acronyms