Hi all,

Here’s my response to the question listed on wiki page for the board election. osm.wiki/Humanitarian_OSM_Team/Board_Elections_2021
Please feel free to comment or message/mail me, talk to you soon!

By Arnalie Vicario
Q1. What is/are the impact/s of the shift from global to regional structure of HOT on voting members?
A1. Strengthen the regional/local community is good in many ways including reducing the language barrier and harmonizing the open culture to local. Voting member is usually the opinion leader of local/regional community. As a result, about the impact of the shift from global to regional structure, it could be good to HOT.

Q2. Conversely, how do you think the voting members should interact (e.g. what is their role) with the Regional Hubs?
A2. Regional hubs can assist the voting members and the local communities to work more aligned to the vision/mission of HOT. The active voting members may talk with regional hubs more often for the harmonization of local/personal interests and HOT objectives.

By Matt Gibb
Q3. How can we support HOT volunteers who may experience burnout as we work towards HOT’s Audacious goals (including Voting Member and non-Voting Member volunteers), while the number of HOT paid staff grows?
A3. Burnout in community happens, so the responsibility of paid staff is getting heavier. We should facilitate more communications so we “speak out before burnout”. We also could take turns (flying geese paradigm) to be responsible for the tasks towards HOT’s audacious goals that potentially burnout community members.

By Heather Leson
Q4. What are the most important things the HOT board should be doing for the 1. membership 2. board 3. staff 4. global OSM community?
A4. (1) to facilitate the friendly (in many ways) environment for our community members. (2) be the plus to the operation of HOT. (3) share the experience and expertise. (4) be more influential in global community.

Q5. What are your views on an operational versus strategic board for HOT?
A5. Operational board is to assist HOT organization/community running smoothly and grow as expected, and the strategic board can envision the potential & future, connect the resources to help HOT to get to its objective.

By Jorieke Vyncke
Q6. HOT is traditionally not much focussed on the mapping of places where people are sufferring from violence and conflict, eg Yemen, Ethiopia, etc. Since many humanitarian organisations working in these places to serve the population could benefit a lot from better map data, should this become a bigger focus of HOT?
A6. “That missing maps are no longer a factor in human suffering or loss of life in humanitarian crises“ is one of the objectives for our Audacious objectives. Also, to get to 1M mappers all over the world, I believe those humanitarian issues should be considered just like inter-commutable diseases or disasters. We might need a good pitch deck to let our community knows more about why mapping can change/help those situations.

By Mikel Maron
Q7. The basics of HOT’s governance model were set 10 years ago in very different circumstances (nominated membership, board members selected from and voted by membership). What are the strengths and weaknesses of HOT’s governance model in 2021, and what would you advocate changing?
A7. I believe the purpose of board members is the assistance to HOT (from the various perspectives to plan and operate). With the elected board and the invited strategic board, I think it’s fine for the governance model of HOT so far.

Q8. As HOT’s budget and staffing increases rapidly, what are the most important roles for the Board to take?
A8. Communication and sharing, board should listen and talk to the staff and community, also share the expertise and experience for HOT to grow towards the audacious goals.

Q9. What is working well in HOT? What is not working well in HOT?
A9. We are great from the perspective of operation, we got good projects, we had our reputation in humanitarian sector, and we incubate good local communities. Maybe we can broaden the participation and the topics of mapping (e.g. the violence and conflict mapping mentioned by Jorieke), bring it up and make it transparent to our community.

By Election Committee
Q10. How have you contributed to HOT’s efforts over the past year?
A10. Yeap I served as board member in 2017, been a voting members for a while. I also helped to organize State of Map Taiwan in 2017, promote HOT in MSF event in Taiwan at 2018, and actively promote/use OSM data in disaster response sector for the recent years. Got the idea of ontology for data quality (could be the profile starting from disaster related scenarios) and perhaps this could be my next contribute to HOT/OSM.

Q11. What are your thoughts on building a welcoming space for communications around humanitarian mapping and OSM as a whole? As such, how would you address conflicts arising between HOT affiliated people/organizations and members of the broader OSM community (eg OSMF members, Local Chapters, individual mappers in an area)?
A11. Communication is one of the important things from my perspective, listen and harmonize, should be helpful for building a welcoming space. The roots of HOT and OSM community are the same, we want to map and want to make it useful to the world. Just HOT run the organization and community in a (relatively more) systematic way. I’m quite optimistic to the conflicts (or just some misunderstanding) between HOT and OSMF.

Q12. With Audacious now in its second year, what do you think of HOT’s current goals? What do you believe could be improved/what is missing from HOT’s priorities?
A12. Inclusion is one of the keys to achieve our audacious project. Having an environment to talk to each other, to share and recognized by community, and to engage various of stakeholders towards audacious objectives.

Q13. Do you see any potential conflicts of interest with you being elected to the Board/Chair position?
A13. Nope.

Q14. How will you ensure that Audacious continues to be implemented with community as its focus?
A14. Need to work with community and keep it aligned to the planned strategy. Not an easy job and can’t be done by one or a few, yet with a group of community members and staff who believe it’s working, it’s gonna be fine.

Q15. What do you see as the greatest challenge the organization is facing strategically, and as a board member, how do you plan on approaching these challenges?
A15. We now have clear objectives, we shall trust the staff, trust the community, properly review the measurable output, be agile and keep aligning the HOT operation towards the goals. There’s no perfect solution for it, yet I think we can have mutual understanding to fulfill the objectives, and make impact to the world, as what we believe from the very beginning.