Talk:Foundation/AGM2024/Election to Board
Official set of questions
Facilitator (Brian Sperlongano): I have now added the official questions. Thanks to all that have participated! These questions are drawn from the community questions and the osmf-talk mailing list. Candidates: Please submit your answers and your manifestos before 2024-09-20 at 23:59 UTC.- directly to Dorothea, as OSMF administrative assistant and CC me (dorothea@osmfoundation.org, zelonewolf@gmail.com) as per the instructions here - please note the requested format, it makes collation far easier! An approximate estimate of how much time that you spend on your answers and manifestos would be appreciated; this will help us in future years. Please answer as many questions as you can. Our suggestion is to answer all of them - we are a global organisation, so many voters won't know you and this will help them make a decision. --ZeLonewolf (talk) 00:32, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
2024 Questions to the Candidates
1. Motivation and Objectives
Why do you want to join the OSMF Board, and what do you hope to accomplish as a board member over the next two years?
2. Conflict of Interest Management
Do you currently have any conflicts of interest that might affect your role on the Board? If so, what are they and how would you manage them? Can you share examples of how you have handled conflicts of interest in the past?
3. Transparency and Accountability
How would you ensure that the Board’s decisions and actions are transparent and accountable to the OSM community?
4. Strategic Vision and Sustainability
What are your thoughts on the OSMF’s strategic plan, and what changes would you suggest to ensure OpenStreetMap’s long-term sustainability? If elected, what would be your top priority? Do you think the OSMF should proceed with the planned relocation outside the UK?
5. Decision-Making and Collaboration
How do you plan to collaborate with other Board members and Working Groups to make decisions and resolve conflicts? Have you been in touch with current Board members to understand the challenges and responsibilities of the role? Which Working Groups would you like to collaborate with, and which Board Officer role or Committee Chair position interests you most, and why?
6. Fundraising and Resource Development
How important do you think fundraising is for the OSMF, and what experience do you have in this area? Have you participated in direct fundraising, grant writing, or public speaking to raise funds?
7. Handling Legal and Political Challenges
The OSMF sometimes receives legal threats or faces political pressure due to controversial topics or disputed territories in the map data. How would you deal with these situations? Are you prepared for potential travel restrictions or government pressure because of the nature of OpenStreetMap data?
8. State of the Map
In 2023, the SotM conference was not held. In 2024, the conference was held, however, some community members expressed concern about safety for participants from marginalized groups and pointed to the OSMF's SotM participant safety policy. How should the OSMF ensure that SotM is held annually, while also being safe and accessible for all members of the global community?
9. Your Community Contributions
The OSMF's primary mission is supporting the global OpenStreetMap community. What specific contributions have you made to OpenStreetMap that reflect your commitment to this mission? Have you participated in cooperative mapping, tagging development, OSM-related software or map style development, or spoken at events or conferences? Have you engaged with the OSM community in your local area or in languages other than English?
10. Promoting Community and Attracting Volunteers
How would you promote diverse voices and perspectives from the global OpenStreetMap community? What steps would you take to attract and retain high-quality volunteers and contributors, especially in underrepresented groups and locations? How would you ensure the OSMF is a safe and welcoming place for all contributors?
11. Technology and Innovation
OpenStreetMap relies heavily on technology. How satisfied are you with the current state of the technology that powers OSM? How would you support or encourage technological advancements and innovation within the OSM ecosystem? What technology changes are the most pressing?
12. Data Quality and Protection
In light of recent vandalism incidents, what if anything should the Board do differently in the area of data protection and quality assurance?
13. Perspective on Open Source
In the leadup to the election, the OSMF encountered issues with its open-source membership management system, CivicCRM. This reignited a long-running debate about whether the OSMF should consider using non-open-source third-party software to address such challenges. Is it acceptable for the OSMF to use non-free software if it supports OSM's goals?
14. Perspective on Overture Maps
The Overture Maps Foundation has been a topic of discussion within the OSM community. What is your position on this initiative and how does it impact the project?
Community questions to OSMF board candidates, upon which the official set will be based
Submission of community questions to the board candidates closed on the 24th August ("end of", in UTC).
Here will be the questions from the OSM community to the candidates for the OpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF) board elections. An official set of questions -based on the questions below- will be published on 7 September.
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 2023, The questions from 2022, 2021, 2020, 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 7 September, on this page. Submit your answers to the official questions and your manifestos directly to the facilitator and cc our administrative assistant. Please view the official questions as a possibility to articulate your views on matters that might be important for OSM community members. 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. 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.
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Please sign and date your questions by typing four tildes ~~~~ at the end of your messages. Thanks :)
Why you want to join?
What is your reason to candidate for OSMF board? What motivates you to work on improving OpenStreetMap Have you considered volunteering in one of Working Groups to achieve this goals?
Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 16:15, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
Legal threats and extortion attempts
OpenStreetMap Foundation sometimes receives protests, demands, legal threats (or documents claiming to be legal threats) regarding disputed territories and other controversial topics. Claiming that data in OpenStreetMap is harmful/evil/illegal. Extortion attempts related to DDOS attacks were also attempted in the past. re you okay with handling these kinds of situations?
Are you comfortable with the idea that there might be restrictions on travel to countries like China or India? This is result of OpenStreetMap data showing de facto borders, rather then what would be preferred by some governments. Are you maybe from such country and therefore at risk of being pressured by the government?
Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 16:13, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
Ability of the board to come to decisions
The present board have not not yet come to an agreement about how to move the registration of the foundation to the EU. How would you ensure the Board doesnʼt get stuck on this or any other matter?
Andrew (talk) 18:22, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
Strategic plan
How do you feel the board has been at implementing the strategic plan, and what, if anything, do you want to change in the plan?
Pnorman (talk) 18:22, 31 July 2024 (UTC)
Overture Maps
If you were on the OSMF Board, what, if anything, would you do about Overture Maps? What should the OSMF do?
-- Amᵃᵖanda (talk) 09:17, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
Review the strategic plan. If you had to choose only 1 -- just 1 -- what would be your top priority?
Mikel (talk) 13:47, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
Outside OSM, how do you help get things done? What is your work style to help make things happen?
The OSMF is a working board, with a unique set up. Much of the effort is setting up the right conditions for contributors.
Mikel (talk) 13:49, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
Your aspiration
With your Board seat, what would you work towards on and would like to accomplish in 2 years?
--Arnalielsewhere (talk) 07:42, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
Working with the Board and Working Groups (WGs)
Being a Board member requires working with your fellow Board members (and WGs) as a team for the good of the Foundation.
How do you handle conflicts within a team?
Which Working Group/s would you like to liaise?
Which Board Officer role and/or Committee Chair would you be interested in to take up and why? (You can see current Board officer roles and committee chairperson here: https://osmfoundation.org/wiki/Officers_%26_Board)
--Arnalielsewhere (talk) 07:53, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
How important is fundraising for the Foundation?
Fundraising is a critical component of any foundation's success. For the Foundation, fundraising is not just about securing funds; it's about building relationships, engaging with the community, and aligning donors with the organization's values and goals.
What experience do you bring to the Foundation to help fundraising? Do you have direct fundraising experience, have you written grant proposals, or have you done any public speaking to raise funds?
Glassman (talk) 23:11, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
Grassroots experience in the OSM community
The Foundation's main purpose is to support the OpenStreetMap community. Essential for that is to have a solid understanding how the diverse global OSM community ticks to be able to make responsible decisions giving support where it is actually most needed (in contrast to where it is most demanded - Matthew effect).
What experiences would you bring to the board to help it better understand the needs of the global OSM community? Do you have experience in cooperative mapping and in interacting with other mappers through that? Do you practically communicate in languages other than English with the OSM community? Have you contributed to the development of tagging in OpenStreetMap and to the documentation of tagging practice? Have you been involved in the development of OpenStreetMap based maps or of software used by mappers?
--Imagico (talk) 11:28, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
How would you like to improve the openstreetmap data distribution? For example in the context of vector tiles or .osm.pbf files
Right now one can consume osm.pbf files from community websites such as geofabrik. One can within reason use the tiles of openstreetmap.org. One can generate his own vector tiles or use a service. My thought is that unlike image tiles, vector tiles are generic enough to be distributed by openstreetmap.org. Of course that does not translate to a mass consumer service, but just the optimal way to distribute the openstreetmap data to the developers which then again bring it to the users. I'm want to make clear it's not about tooling all that much, but about the files and data itself. That brings me to the general question. How would you like to improve the openstreetmap data distribution?
Stillhart (talk) 09:50, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
Abiding by OSMF Policies & convincing marginalized people of commitment to safety
In Oct 2021 the OSMF adopted a policy to not hold State of the Map conference in places that were unsafe for marginalized people (incl. LGBTQ people). But SotM 2024 will be in a place that's LGBTQ+ unsafe. If you were elected to the OSMF Board (a) would you feel bound by previous Board policies and rules? Would you stick to them? and (b) what would you do to regain the trust of marginalized people that the OSMF actualy wants to be a safe & welcoming places for marginalized people?
Amᵃᵖanda (talk) 12:16, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
Data quality
What do you think of the current quality of OSM? How do you think it can be improved?
CjMalone (talk) 19:45, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
Data distribution
Currently all changesets are immediately published to the planet.pbf. With recent vandalism attempts, do you think this should be changed? Or alternate options added, such as a "stable" or "LTS" file that has had QA tests applied to it. Or should every OSM consumer do it's own QA tests before using new data?
CjMalone (talk) 19:45, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
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. You can join the OpenStreetMap Foundation at https://supporting.openstreetmap.org/#Membership-Categories You can view all emails here.