[ok-scotland] Fwd: first board meeting?

Wed Jun 30 13:32:48 UTC 2010

Paola,

Just a quick note as I'm in a conference in Torino, but:

(i) here is OKF governance document, which I have pointed out to you
before: http://okfn.org/governance

(ii) here is Projects Committee, which *anyone* can get involved in
and which is charged with OKF strategy, funding, and approval of
projects/working groups. If you want to run (and get funding for) a
project under the auspices of the OKF, please propose it here:
<http://wiki.okfn.org/wg/coord>. If you want to get more involved you
are most welcome -- the best way is to start *doing* something (write
a piece of code, draft a document, propose/start a working group, host
a monthly call on an area of interest, organise a workshop, ...). If
you have any problems -- please raise them, e.g. on our okfn-help
list, where other folks interested in open knowledge will do their
best to help you out! We are still working out how to refine the
process of seeding/supporting projects -- and you are welcome to join
the discussion on the okfn-coord list!

(iii) just to clarify some of your (Paola's) comments (some of which I
thought were really unfair!) the OKF is not 'stuck', 'a bit of a
mess', or 'secret'. The board is overwhelmingly dealing with
administrivia -- like VAT applications, risk management, chasing up
invoices, and legal aspects of taking on projects (e.g. libel). We are
committed to having a board of directors that are legally responsible
for the administrative side of the OKF. Board members are folks with
proven relevant experience of this kind of admin. We are *always*
looking for people to volunteer to help out with this (pretty unsexy)
side of the organisation -- and all our board members are unpaid and
very busy with other things. I'm deeply grateful for the work they put
in. All of the *interesting* discussions -- where we should focus,
what we should try to raise funds for, what we should do next, etc. --
will take place at the *public* project committee meeting. Paola -- I
*explicitly* invited you to the last one, but you said you were too
busy! Please at least attempt to spend half an hour attending one of
these meetings before saying that the OKF is broken, nontransparent or
undemocratic! As it says in our governance docs we are *deeply*
committed to being democratic and community driven (which is often
quite a bit of extra work) and we work hard at this. However the truth
is also that people are often (understandably!) too busy to get
involved -- even though our doors are wide open!

Jonathan