Talk:Foundation/AGM20/Election to Board

All candidates have now responded to the official set of questions (see below) and their answers per question and their manifestos are linked from this page.

Official set of questions for candidates

The deadline for members to post questions for the candidates -upon which the official questions will be based- has been reached. Thanks to all that have participated.

I have now added the official questions. Candidates: Please submit your answers -and your manifestos- before 2020-11-25 00:01 UTC- directly to me and cc our administrative assistant (mike@ayeltd.biz, dorothea@osmfoundation.org). Michael Collinson (facilitator),

Please answer as many questions as you can. Our suggestion is to answer all of them - as we are a global organisation many voters won't know you and this will help them make a decision. Please divide your answers clearly - it makes our editting job much more easy! - you can use the numbers in the contents above. Please also keep an approximate record of how much time that you spend on your answers and manifestos; this will help us in future years.

ABOUT YOU:

Your OSM activities

For example:

• What brought you to OSM and why are you still part of it now?
• What is your OSM user name?
• What mapping contributions have you made in the last year?
• Are you/have you been a member of any OSMF working groups?
• Do you participate with other OSM mappers, for example in a local chapter or in social meet ups?
• Have you run anything yourself, such as an OSM-newbie event?
• Have you written about OpenStreetMap in the past - for example, in a blog, or on mailing lists, or in a newspaper? Please provide links if you can.
• Do you contribute as a software developer?
• Have you attended board meetings as a guest?

Why you want to be a board member?

• What do you think you can achieve as a board member that you can't as a regular OSM(F) member?
• What is the most pressing issue the OSMF board should address?

Your time

If you are currently a member of a working group, do you plan to continue your role in that working group while on the board? Do you have enough time to commit to multiple roles?

Do you have any previous relevant experience?

Please describe any experience you have that might help you be a board member. Here are some examples to help you:

• Being a board member for OSMF often involves complex negotiation and discussions within the board, with working groups, and with the wider OSM community. Teamwork and the ability to make decisions, listen (truly listen) and hear a diverse set of opinions takes humility, time management, calm process planning, and community-building skills. Do you have an experience where you managed scenarios and conversations that you may not have agreed with and/or that challenged you.
• Do you have experience of managing a project or a team of people? Do you have any experience of coaching others to lead (i.e. managing managers)? How long have you been doing these things?
• Have you ever managed multiple stakeholders with different agendas? What was the situation? What did you do? What challenges did you face and how did you overcome them?

Transparency: Conflicts of interest

A. Is your main source of income related to mapping or GIS work in some way, (whether OSM-related or not)?

B. Are you an employee of, member of, or otherwise affiliated with (paid or non-paid) a company, government organization or non-profit that does work in the OSM ecosystem or might compete with it? Do you have any contracts (employment or otherwise) which would limit what you can say in public that are relevant to OSM? eg a non-disparagement clause with a company/org in the OSM ecosystem? Or an employment contract which commits you to "always work in the company's best interest"?

YOUR VIEW:

What to do with the face to face meeting in Corona times?

The Board has a tradition to do an expenses-paid two day face-to-face meeting soon after the election, with a focus on agenda-setting for the rest of the year. Since there will be many new members, it also offers a chance to get to know each other better. Do you think this is a good idea? Should this be rather replaced by a video conference, given the uncertainties for travelling in the next year?

What's the use of the OSMF ?

From the point of view of a small contributor, how does the OSMF helps me and could improve my "work conditions" ?

Editing conflicts

The development of the iD editor has been classically contentious. Folks put a lot of the their time into development but made controversial tagging decisions. Do you think that they are right? What role should the OSMF and OSMF board have because it now pays an iD developer?

Your views on the use and control of AI (Artificial Intelligence) edit systems?

• Do you have any familiarity with OSM AI systems? (e.g. Facebook AI-Assisted Road Tracing, RapiD)
• Do you support the development of it?
• If the use of AI systems causes damages on existing OSM geographical data (e.g. in Philippines) do you see any needed activity from OSMF side? If yes, which solution the OSMF should provide to control this and organised editing?
• How is your general opinion about automated edits?

Should we do anything about EU database rights?

The OSMF is incorporated in the UK. The UK completely leaves the European Union on 31 December 2020 and so EU database rights held by UK entities are impacted. Do you think that changes that keep our license clearly enforceable in the EU (e.g. moving the OSMF) are important? Would you give them high priority for your involvement in the OSMF board?

Community questions to OSMF board candidates, upon which the official set will be based

Here are questions from the OSM community to the candidates for the OSMF board elections. An official set of questions -based on the questions below- will be published on November 28.

Asking questions? You are kindly asked to be respectful in your tone and try to phrase questions in an open way without already implying a certain answer or trick questions which are superficially about something else than what you want to know. Also you should give enough context to your questions, possibly with links, so they can be understood by any interested community member and not just insiders familiar with the specific subject and by any candidate so both long term active members and newcomers have an equal chance of giving you an accurate and honest answer.

The questions from 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016 etc. might still be relevant for inspiration.

Questions from non English speaking community members

• We invite local communities to get together, discuss and add their questions. If you do not feel comfortable in asking your questions in English, feel free to add them in your native language.
• We invite other community members who can help, to add translations above of the non-EN questions. In case no-one reading this page can help, the Communication Working Group (CWG) will try to find people to translate the questions.
• Please note that -depending on the language and date- the CWG cannot guarantee translation of all non-EN questions. So, we kindly ask you to add any non-EN questions as soon as possible.

Are you a candidate? In advance thanks to all candidates for standing for election. You are kindly asked to wait for the official set of questions, which will be published on November 28th, on this page. Please submit your answers to the official questions and your manifestos directly to the facilitator Mike Collinson and cc our administrative assistant (mike@ayeltd.biz, dorothea@osmfoundation.org). Please view the official questions as a possibility to articulate your views on matters that might be important for OSM community members. And please state freely if you have not formed an opinion on a question or are unable to answer it based on your current knowledge. Please also feel encouraged to state if your position on a question is a firm conviction or if what you say is just an opinion. Also if English is not your native language and you feel you cannot properly express your ideas on a certain question in English feel free to answer in your native language.

Thank you all for participating in this procedure.

Please add your questions below.
Please sign and date your posts by typing four tildes ~~~~ at the end of your messages. Thanks :)

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What's the use of the OSMF ?

From the point of view of a small contributor, how does the OSMF helps me and could improve my "work conditions" ? --Lejun (talk) 06:56, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

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It is less than a day before the deadline for questions, and only one single question has been submitted so far. For this reason I would like to resubmit the official questions from 2019. I have adapted them to the things that have changed since last year.

Tell us a little about your OSM activities

For example:

• What brought you to OSM and why are you still part of it now?
• What is your OSM user name?
• What mapping contributions have you made in the last year?
• Are you/have you been a member of any OSMF working groups?
• Do you participate with other OSM mappers, for example in a local chapter or in social meet ups?
• Have you run anything yourself, such as an OSM-newbie event?
• Have you written about OpenStreetMap in the past - for example, in a blog, or on mailing lists, or in a newspaper? Please provide links if you can.
• Do you contribute as a software developer?
• Have you attended board meetings as a guest?

Tell us a little about why you want to be a board member

• What do you think you can achieve as a board member that you can't as a regular OSM(F) member?
• What is the most pressing issue the OSMF board should address?

Being a board member

Please describe any experience you have had in ANY or ALL of these 3 areas:

1. Being a board member for OSMF often involves complex negotiation and discussions within the board, with working groups, and with the wider OSM community. Teamwork and the ability to make decisions, listen (truly listen) and hear a diverse set of opinions takes humility, time management, calm process planning, and community-building skills. Please also share examples on how you managed scenarios and conversations that you may not agree with and/or that challenge you.
2. Do you have experience of managing a project or a team of people? Do you have any experience of coaching others to lead (i.e. managing managers)? How long have you been doing these things?
3. Have you ever managed multiple stakeholders with different agendas? What was the situation? What did you do? What challenges did you face and how did you overcome them?

Board diversity

All remaining board members are men and all candidates are men.

1. Is this indicative of a gender diversity problem within OpenStreetMap? If so:
2. Can you describe the problem as you understand it?
3. What is the role of the board to help fix this?
4. What will you do in particular?
5. What will you do for gender inclusiveness, equality and global diversity OSM working groups and governance?

Your time

If you are currently a member of a working group, do you plan to continue your role in that working group while on the board? Do you have enough time to commit to multiple roles?

Transparency: Conflicts of interest

Is your main source of income related to mapping or GIS work in some way, (whether OSM-related or not)?

What, if any, conflicts of interest do you have that would affect you if you were on the board?

Specifically, are you an employee of, member of, or otherwise affiliated with (paid or non-paid) a company, government organization or non-profit that does work in the OSM ecosystem or might compete with it? Do you have any contracts (employment or otherwise) which would limit what you can say in public that are relevant to OSM? eg a non-disparaging clause with a company/org in the OSM ecosystem? Or an employment contract which commits you to "always work in the company's best interest"?

What to do with the face to face meeting in Corona times?

The Board has a tradition to do an expenses-paid two day face-to-face meeting soon after the election, with a focus on agenda-setting for the rest of the year. Since there will be many new members, it also offers a chance to get to know each other better. Do you think this is a good idea? Should this be rather replaced by a video conference, given the uncertainties for travelling in the next year?

The Board and Working Groups

Please give us your view on the current overall structure and health of OSMF working groups using at least SOME of the following questions to help you.

How do you feel about the current structure of the OSMF, and the divisions of responsibility between the Board and the Working Groups? Are those divisions clear to you? Are there responsibilities of the OSMF that are not currently under the remit of any working group? Is this a good thing? Do you think the working groups are fulfilling their responsibilities? Are each of the working groups healthy? How do you think the board should support the working groups?

It seems that working groups are not growing in participation. Some of the groups are over-tasked. Others are maintained by the same people year over year. While this contribution is wonderful, part of community health is engaging new volunteers/leaders. If the majority of big decisions about OSMF/ OSM are to be done by the working groups, how can we be sure that they get more support? What is your role as a potential board member to assist on the sustainability of working groups?

The Board and the community: communication

There a lots of communication methods amongst the OSM community and OSM project. How do you personally keep track of everything being said/discussed/agreed?

1. How will you improve on diverse communication styles and communication channels across OSM and OSMF?

The Board and the community: What would you do? ...

Being a board member requires you to carefully discuss, assess issues and either reject or follow through on a solution and actually "make it happen". With this in mind, here is a selection of potentially tough or controversial issues that concern individual OSMF members. Please think through ONE in detail and let us know your views. Time permitting, feel free to comment more briefly on other issues - there will be at least one voter interested in your answer!

• Gender pronouns. Some other online community rules/codes of conducts require the use of a person's stated pronouns (aka “preferred pronouns”), e.g. the correct pronouns for transgender people, including the use of “gender neutral singular they” or neo-pronouns (e.g. ”xe”). Do you think this is a reasonable rule that OSM(F) should adopt? Or a completely intolerable ridiculous rule?

• Prominent projects like Facebook, MAPS.ME or Moovit are using OSM data but are allegedly missing proper attribution. This is unchanged despite multiple requests from various mappers. What would you do as a board member?

• What is your position about corporate members of OSMF that have been asked for several years to comply with Foundation and community expectations and have always ignored these issues, such as attribution and the license itself?

• What are your thoughts about employees of companies (that use OSM data) becoming Board or Working Group members of OSMF? What is your solution to ensure transparency, equity and impartiality of OSMF in cases like this?

• Independent of this, what is your stance about the newly created, by the OSMF paid positions (SSRE, iD development, other development grants)?

• The European Union has enacted new tough rules on personal data protect, "GDPR". These came into force in May 2018. According to the License Working Group, OSM needs to make some server API changes to comply fully and these are not yet done. If elected, what will you do to clarify the situation? Do you think the OSMF is currently potentially at risk of not being GDPR-compliant?

Reddit AMA

There is a current [Reddit 'Ask me Anything'](https://www.reddit.com/r/openstreetmap/comments/jnijni/ask_us_anything_we_are_openstreetmap_foundation/), if one is looking to find out the sort of thing OSMers ask about. Rorym (talk)

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Worldwide community

What will you do to build a worldwide community of mappers? --User:Wynndale 9 November 2020

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Software dispute resolution panel

What is your opinion of the proposal for a software dispute resolution panel? --User:Wynndale 9 November 2020

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Paid staff

How many staff should the OSMF be paying? --User:Wynndale 9 November 2020

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Future of OSM / OSMF in regard of AI systems

• Do you know OSM AI systems? (e.g. Facebook AI-Assisted Road Tracing, RapiD)
• Do you support the development of it?
• If the use of AI systems causes damages on existing OSM geographical data (e.g. in Philippines Thailand Correction, thanks to user:seav) do you see any needed activity from OSMF side? If yes, which solution the OSMF should provide to control this and organised editing?
• How is your general opinion about automated edits?

--MalgiK (talk) 06:02, 10 November 2020 (UTC) / Example correction (--MalgiK (talk) 10:33, 29 November 2020 (UTC))

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Brexit and our rights

After 31 December 2020, database rights hold by British companies (or individuals) will be void in the European Union (except rights on old data). This affects the ability to enforce our license in the EU. Do you think that changes that keep our license enforceable in the EU (e.g. moving the OSMF) are important? Would you give them high priority for your involvement in the OSMF board? --Nakaner (talk) 00:04, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Editing conflicts

What is your opinion on the decisions on tagging made by the iD developers in the past two years? Do you think that they are right? What role should OSMF have because it pays on iD developer? --Nakaner (talk) 00:04, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Undisclosed funding

Should OSMF accept funding/donations by companies or organisations which do not want to be disclosed to the public? --Nakaner (talk) 00:04, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Deadline reached. The official set of questions will be based on the community questions above and possibly questions from previous years

The deadline for members to post questions for the candidates -upon which the official questions will be based- has been reached. Thanks to all that have participated.

Next step
Our election facilitator, Michael Collinson will organise the community questions and will publish an official set for the candidates.

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General Election to Board Wiki-Discussion:

This space is for discussing the page in a normal wiki talk page like style. For substantial election discussions the osmf-talk mailing list is probably a more suitable place. Subscription to osmf-talk is available to members of the Foundation, using the same email-address they have registered as OSMF members.