Yesterday was the first meeting of the new OSMF board and i thought i’d write down some comments on it since it was noticeably different from previous meetings. With three of the previous board members having left, two of them having been on the board for a long time and one having been the chairperson for a long time it was obvious there were going to be changes and i want to share a few impressions of this from an outside perspective.

What has not changed is that many of the board members seemed remarkably unprepared. This is not necessarily a big deal, board members are volunteers and you cannot necessarily expect everyone to sit down for a few hours before the meeting preparing themselves for all subjects that might be discussed. But i as someone who just listens in and does zero preparation for that other than looking at the agenda five minutes before the start often find myself wondering when a matter comes up why no one is ready to discuss it. This especially applies to this first meeting after the election when the election of treasurer, secretary and chairperson are obviously on the agenda so you would assume that those who consider one of these positions to have made up their mind if they want it or not. Don’t get me wrong - i am generally a huge fan of just winging it - but you have to be able to do that if you want to.

The meeting started with everyone being unsure about who would chair the meeting since neither the former chairperson nor the former secretary were on the board any more. Ultimately Paul assumed the position of temporary chair since he had formerly been secretary. But it might be a good idea to make a note of the problem and add a rule for that to the board rules of order in the future.

The election of the officers was interesting. The first position to be selected was that of the treasurer and since ahead of the election the only one who had expressed willingness to do that was Guillaume the decision was clear. Next was the position of the chairperson. This would usually come first but it was quite reasonable to choose the treasurer first because it was a clearer case. The chairperson’s main task in everyday business is to chair the board meetings. Allan volunteered for that, was elected and took over the meeting then. The more interesting election came next for the secretary. Mikel volunteered for the position and Joost after some hesitation (he seemed to be unsure if he actually wanted to do that or not) volunteered as well. The vote was called and one by one all board members voted for Joost so ultimately Mikel gave in and made it unanimous by voting for Joost as well.

The rest of the meeting proceeded in a fairly efficient and streamlined fashion thanks to Allan’s style of chairing the meeting (i will comment on that in more detail later). Most of the votes were unanimous IIRC. I was somewhat annoyed - though not really surprised by two things:

• The decision on if to continue using Loomio was made with the stated intention to “re-evaluate at a later date” and although the idea to firmly plan to do that in half a year was mentioned it was not made part of the decision. This was probably at least to some part due to the board members still struggling with the procedural framework established by Allan.
• The discussion on the F2F meeting failed to give any consideration to minimizing costs and resource use for the meeting or discuss a clear commitment to measurable results. Also the idea to combine the F2F meeting of the board with a meeting with the OWG was introduced without any discussion of the goals of the latter or consideration for the need for thorough preparation. As said this was not unexpected considering the candidates’ statements before the elections but still it was sobering to see how little reflection there was given to the moral obligations resulting from spending other people’s money.

The most surprising part of the meeting came at the very end when Guillaume out of the blue (apparently without having talked with anyone else about this before) brought up the idea of creating a diversity working group within the OSMF. You could literally hear Mikel considering “Is this a trap?” when he gave a guardedly positive comment instead of the enthusiastic support you would have kind of expected. The thing is the whole idea of the board top down establishing a new working group is kind of problematic given the concept of working groups in general and this approach to creation would permanently hang over such a working group in the future. Tobias in his comment succinctly mentioned the two big issues with the idea:

• the problem of establishing a working group top down by the board instead of bottom up as an initiative from the membership.
• the problem that such a working group in particular when established this way would be - well - inherently non-diverse in it most likely attracting mostly proponents of the idea of diversity engineered from the top rather than diversity organically brought in from the bottom.

Independent of these issues with the idea itself i tink it would be kind of cheap of the board to try delegating the issue of the lack of diversity in the OSMF to a working group without first having a serious discussion about it among themselves and with the OSM community about what they can do themselves. In German we have the saying “Wenn man nicht mehr weiter weiß, dann gründet man einen Arbeitskreis” - which i think catches this point of critique quite well. We should not let the board get off the hook that easily and we especially should not let them use such a working group of self appointed experts on diversity from within a highly non-diverse organization as a convenient “Ersatzöffentlichkeit” sparing them the trouble to actually talk to the OSM community in its whole diversity about the diversity issues of the OSMF.

There is a lot the board could do to improve diversity in the OSMF, in particular by actively reducing the English language dominance throughout the organization. They should actually work on that IMO instead of recruiting an English language debate club most likely mainly talking about how to engineer a pseudo-diversity within the OSMF and propagate that down into the OSM community.

As already hinted Allan as the new chair of the meeting adopted a style very different from how Kate chaired the meetings. I kind of like it for its efficiency and clear structure, it requires preparation and attention from the board members to successfully contribute to decision making processes - which i think is a good thing. And it also kind of follows my recommendation of establishing a more parliament-like work culture. What is a bit problematic is that it is a very culture specific style making it a bit difficult for board members not very fluent in the English language or even people more familiar with British traditions (Rory made a point of that in the meeting) to engage in the procedures. This is not too much of a problem right now with the board members all being fairly good in English - they would just need to get familiar with the procedure - but it could become more of a problem with other board members joining in the future. As far as i understand the procedures Allan followed Dorothea linked to some references on that in the draft minutes, in a small board like that of the OSMF these procedures can be relaxed which might take the edge off a bit without loosing the positive structure and clear framework they provide.

One funny thing about the meeting was that there was kind of a running gag of Allan always missing Joost’s first articulation of his vote during votes. This was probably just a starting difficulty but it kind of provided good entertainment for everyone listening. There were other minor technical issues - like Rory having a sticking PTT key and Tobias being hard to understand (some tuning of the audio levels/microphone position would be advisable). Good audio adjustment can immensely help a smooth meeting and everyone being able to articulate their views equally.

Allan did not significantly participate in the discussions during the meeting and i hope this is not going to become the usual procedure since one of the reasons Allan was elected to the board was because he would be able to bring in a perspective that would be very useful and otherwise missing in the board.

So overall it was great to see how established structures within the board are kind of opened with three new board members. There is a lot of potential visible in increased productiveness and less aimless chatter during the meetings. One thing brought up by Guillaume was to have more frequent board meetings twice a month. Not sure if that is necessary and productive in the form of a formal board meeting like that but it might make sense to have alternating more formal meetings and more informal work sessions with more active involvements of the broader community. But if the board meetings turn out to be very full with topics and decisions in the next months it would surely be worth considering increasing their frequency. Would need to take into account time constraints of the board members, especially those for whom the meetings usually are during the day like Paul.