[foundation-board] Fwd: [okfn-coord] OKF tasks and the cost of coordination

[Jordan S Hatcher]

[Forwarding this to Board]

Hi Jo

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Jo Walsh <metazool at gmail.com>
> Date: 7 September 2010 02:10:07 CEST
> To: OKF management group <okfn-coord at lists.okfn.org>
> Subject: [okfn-coord] OKF tasks and the cost of coordination
> Reply-To: List for OKF projects committee <okfn-coord at lists.okfn.org>
> 
> http://wiki.okfn.org/coord/tasks
> 
> I added a few coordination tasks to this list of tasks, which is now recursive, hooray.
> 
> I am putting in a fair bit of time (half personal and half work subsidised) to thinking about and writing to people/groups about OKF coordination at the moment, while scaling seems so pressing.

Thanks for putting in so much time on this.  I think it's really critical -- I have some feedback and some concerns specifically about the project management layer for our more commercial / contracting activities as a result of this week here in Germany for LOD2 that I'll share in a separate email.  

> 
> It would help me a lot if i was getting paid for this, about a half day a week, better focus and clearer conscience, and the ability to cut back my office hours and be more flexible. Most others involved in OKF (meta)-management seem to be getting paid. I feel odd about requesting this because i am a Board member. But perhaps i shouldn't.
> 
> So i feel i should float this here, to be clear. Feel free to chew on it for a while, i am buggering off for the rest of the week.

AFAIK, we didn't vote to move any general budget power over to coord except for the possibility *in the future* to:

-- give coord a small grant <£5,000
-- for this grant to be spent on the OKF community [which is very different from spending it on coord itself]

I appreciate that maybe we should look to provide a stipend for some of the work you're doing Jo, 

However, I think it is really inappropriate for this request to be sent to Coord.

As a factual point, I don't really think that anyone other than Mark, whose work I thought was approved in line with the board's decision to have a project coordinator, is getting paid for "meta-management" of OKF. I'm very concerned that the above, and your suggestion regarding Paola, will have a negative impact on all the volunteer time that our project people are putting in by making it look like most everyone gets paid.

Most of our project people are in the coord list, and so in the loop for this very public discussion.

I can speak for myself here in that I do get contracting money from OKF, but that is solely project based and comes out of project budgets, with a margin for OKF core.  All my "meta management" OKF time is pro bono.

Paying you for your time (which is of course an option) seems to me to be the kind of discussion that is a board decision.

> In addition, Paola DM is offering me valuable bursts of advice, as OKF's efforts spread this is taking up social time that could be used to talk about more fun things, a consultancy fee for time is in order.

I also think that it is inappropriate to bring this up on coord as well.

Again, coord has no budget power to make this decision and this is effectively asking a body in the middle of figuring out its organisational structure and role to make a critical decision with no clear path on how to make that decision.  

Also I'm not really clear the value that Paola brings or that we need to bring someone on as an "organisational consultant". 

I have begun to feel really strongly that by these kinds of emails and by the discussion and tone by Paola on the coord list that we are sending absolutely the wrong message to the core project people in our community.

I think that we must:

-- move the kinds of discussion that has been happening on coord to a different list, such as okfn-governance.  It is counter-productive and antagonistic when we need to be cooperative and productive.  See Ian Ibbotson's email on coord.

-- get coord to a place where it can help project people do projects

I suggest we focus on governance almost exclusively at our next meeting.

Thanks

~Jordan




> 
> ?
> 
> love,
> 
> 
> jo
> --
> 
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____
Mr. Jordan S Hatcher, JD, LLM

More at: <http://www.jordanhatcher.com>
Co-founder:  <http://www.opendatacommons.org>
Open Knowledge: <http://www.okfn.org/>