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

Mon Jan 10 21:12:22 UTC 2011

Agree with Jordan below. Becky, personally, I would remove about 75% of the below as a narrative that I'm not especially comfortable with, and simply state the facts of the situation.

Cheers,
Ian.
--
http://people.oii.ox.ac.uk/brown/

On 10 Jan 2011, at 20:22, Jordan S Hatcher wrote:

> Hi Becky
> 
> Thanks for putting this together -- really great stuff! My only comment is:
> 
>>> discussed three promising looking income
>>> streams: consultancy projects (whose operating profits could be
>>> "tithed" back to the community), grants, and fundraising from the
>>> network.
> 
> Sorry to keep banging on this drum but can we please please erase "tithe" from our vocabulary?  "Profit" too as we are a non-profit. 
> 
> We do projects that generate a **"surplus"** (not a profit) that we then use to support the mission of the OKF to promote open knowledge. It is not a tithe. We are not supporting the church and clergy with one tenth of our earnings taken as a tax. We are doing perfectly reasonable and normal contracting work that meets our goals of open knowledge based on our expertise and using any surpluses to fund our unfunded open knowledge projects.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Jordan
> 
> 
> On 10 Jan 2011, at 18:26, Rufus Pollock wrote:
> 
>> 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
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> foundation-board mailing list
>>> foundation-board at lists.okfn.org
>>> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-board
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> Co-Founder, Open Knowledge Foundation
>> Promoting Open Knowledge in a Digital Age
>> http://www.okfn.org/ - http://blog.okfn.org/
>> 
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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/>
> 
> 
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