[foundation-board] an interesting potential coordinator

[Jo Walsh]

On 31/08/2010 14:22, Ian Brown wrote:
> I would be *extremely* concerned at leaving in place the current
> disjointed structure -- it is just too easy for important issues to
> fall through the cracks if several different individuals are
> responsible for different pieces. That is the difficulty with the
> route that Jo has suggested.

Yes, it is clear that there are deep problems - too much is getting 
dropped on the floor.

But i don't think hiring an Executive Director (because, this is what 
you and Becky are talking about here) will help. Not only will it not 
solve our problems, it will cause new ones.

Because documentation - publishing contracts, details of budgets, 
deliverables, schedules, etc - all this is the responsibility of project 
managers. If project managers do their job right, there should be 
minimal need for a coordinator to do a lot of aggregation of information 
for overview *by the world, not just the board*.

Do you really think that hiring a "black box" will magically fix our 
structural/organisational problems?

OKF is modelled on the Apache Software Foundation, that is where its 
structure comes from. Last time i checked, ASF did not have an Exec 
Director. No-one can speak for the whole of ASF, said a couple of their 
board members to me. So they hire in sysadmin and administration.
We are talking dozens of projects with thousands of committers and 
millions in budget here. ASF has scaled without having to put someone in 
charge of the whole thing.