[foundation-board] Blog post to accompany publication of Board minutes

Mon Jan 10 18:26:22 UTC 2011

On 10 January 2011 15:55, Becky Hogge <becky.hogge at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi everyone
>
> I've worked up a draft blog post to accompany the publication of the
> minutes we approved last meeting. Comments and suggestions for
> improvement welcome.

Really great post -- and I really like the way it gives a sense of
what has has happened too. Couple of minor comments inline below.

Rufus

>
> Begin blog post//
>
> It is with a mix of regret and pride that today, on behalf of the OKF
> Board of Directors, I'm publishing minutes of OKF Board meetings
> dating back to May 2009. Regret because these minutes should have been

Worth pointing out that we had published quite a few sets of minutes
including some of the most significant (e.g. May 2009, Aug 2010)
already up on the website. Not saying that we haven't been a bit
delinquent but we shouldn't overdo it :)

> made public much earlier than now, and it's just been one of those
> items on the Board's to do list that has been put off and put off
> again in favour of other items, either more immediately pressing or
> more exciting. And pride because together this set of minutes
> documents, if only from one rather dry perspective, the growth and
> development of an organisation and community that has achieved rather
> a lot in the last 18 months.
>
> It's a story worth telling. In May 2009, the OKF Board met face to
> face in the Cambridgeshire countryside for a day-long brainstorming
> session about how best it could contribute to the network's future.
> Here, we outlined a shared vision for the organisation as one that
> supports autonomous projects loosely joined by their endorsement and
> promotion of open knowledge (as set out in the open knowledge
> definition). We looked in detail at compliance issues, sketched out
> projected outgoings, and discussed three promising looking income
> streams: consultancy projects (whose operating profits could be
> "tithed" back to the community), grants, and fundraising from the
> network.
>
> That meeting defined much of the work that was to come. That Summer,
> while Jordan Hatcher put in a lot of pro bono time cementing
> compliance processes, I produced a selection of potential financial
> plans, and Paula le Dieu worked up a more detailed reflection of the
> OKF vision that would eventually be put out for consultation with the
> community at the end of the year. In the meantime the OKF began
> working with the Cabinet Office, 4IP and others (such as
> farmsubsidy.org and aid.info), contributing legal and technical
> expertise to realise various projects, including data.gov.uk and Where
> Does My Money Go? Rufus Pollock maintained an overview of this work,
> reporting financial and legal issues to the Board at monthly
> conference call meetings, while Martin Keegan contributed accounting
> expertise, helping prepare for the year-end accounts, submitted  in
> February 2010.
>
> The following August, when the Board met again for an away day in
> Cambridgeshire, the organisation it was discussing was in radically
> different shape. Thanks to a number of ongoing consultancy projects, a
> significant cash surplus had been accrued. And the profile of the
> organisation had increased dramatically. Rufus Pollock was on the
> verge of accepting a year-long fellowship at the Shuttleworth
> Foundation to continue driving forward the open data agenda. The
> number of potential consultancy and grant-funded projects had
> multiplied, and now included significant EU grant funding on the
> horizon.
>
> It was all good news, but it did present the Board with a number of
> new challenges. Firstly, the proliferation of projects combined with
> his new role at Shuttleworth made it clear that Rufus could no longer
> act as liaison between the day-to-day operations of the various arms
> of the OKF, and the Board. So we resolved to recruit for a new role -
> that of Project Coordinator. Seen as a compliment to the excellent
> work conducted by Jonathan Gray as Community Coordinator, the Project
> Coordinator would keep an eye on all contracted and grant-funded
> projects and report back to the Board so that we could continue our
> legal and finacial oversight role.
>
> The second - and nicest - challenge was how best to manage the
> operating surplus so that we could distribute it to those parts of the
> community that could do with it most. Our attempts to address this
> challenge remain ongoing, but at the August meeting we resolved to
> take an incremental, experimental approach, devolving discussion of
> the possibilities to the Coordination Committee, chaired at that time
> by Board Member Jo Walsh.
>
> The third challenge is in some sense the driving force behind this
> blog post. Since that meeting in May 2009 we have been acutely aware
> of the qualities that set OKF apart from other organisations, and of
> our duty as a Board to maintain those qualities. OKF is first and
> foremost a community, and thus the Board's role in shaping OKF's
> future should be limited to maintaining the financial and legal
> viability of the organisation. The Board has consciously avoided
> appointing anyone as its Executive Director. We feel that the
> strategic direction in which the organisation travels should be
> defined as far as possible by active members of the OKF community.
>
> It may seem odd, then, that we have not published these minutes
> sooner. And it is odd - in fact, the number of times an ACTION item is
> listed in these minutes to "progress publishing the minutes" is almost
> comical, if it weren't, from the Board's perspective, so regrettable.

I reiterate my point above. Not sure we really need this level of self
flagellation. Some of our meeting minutes *have* been put up
(including the 2 most significant meetings ...)

> We have delayed publishing minutes of our discussions from the past 18
> months not from lack of will, but from lack of time, as we have been
> running to keep up with the pace with which open knowledge has
> rocketed up the national and international agenda. As well as
> resolving to publish the minutes as soonas they have been officially
> approved and adopted, this year the Board will be focussing on more
> ways to get the community involved in strategic decision-making at
> OKF. We're already speaking with members of other collaborative
> organisations, such as the Apache Software Foundation, about models
> that we could adapt or adopt.
>
> As a read through of the last 18 months' worth of minutes will
> confirm, governance is rarely sexy. But speaking as one person who has
> been part of this Board during this exciting phase of OKF's
> development, I think it can still be rewarding. I hope that if you do
> take time to read through the minutes we've published, you're inspired
> by the work that we've done. After all, the reason we come together
> regularly to discuss VAT registration, financial compliance, and
> contractual committments is because we're inspired by the work that
> you do.
>
> //ends
>
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-- 
Co-Founder, Open Knowledge Foundation
Promoting Open Knowledge in a Digital Age
http://www.okfn.org/ - http://blog.okfn.org/