Dear all, As you have read in our secretary Renee’s email on Friday, we didn’t need elections this year as we received 6 amazing nominations for 6 available vacancies in the Board. I would like to share with you all some very personal considerations about this (be aware: if it’s going to be a long email!)
It’s great for me to see we have a full board for next year. I’m very happy to see both familiar faces and new people stepping up and deciding to sacrifice a bit of their time and energy to help grow our community. I personally want to thank Ponsyano and Renee for taking excellent care of this year’s nominations and election process, especially considering it was their first ride with it! My bestest wishes to Ana, Dani, and Nick for their first term as board members—I’m really looking forward to working with you! Also, thanks again to Alex, Ewen and Jonah for deciding to stick around for another term. Your work in the community is incredibly important, and we’re all glad you’ll be with us next year too. It has been a pleasure—and a challenge! —being the chair this year. Thanks for the trust you have given me and for the many supportive and encouraging messages you’ve sent: it feels great to know that you all care about the work we’re trying to do! Please don’t ever stop sending any kind of feedback; we can only learn from our errors if we are aware of them. Speaking of things that still don’t work, I want to address one that still worries me: the ASIC Director ID requirement for new directors. For those who aren’t aware, Australian rules require everyone applying for a director position to obtain a specific Director ID. This process is very easy, quick and straightforward for Australian citizens but lengthy and expensive for everyone else. As the current chair, I feel I have failed to find a viable solution for this year’s elections, which meant only Australian candidates could be successfully nominated. While I’m excited to work with the new board members, who are amazing and dedicated to the community, I feel that not making the process easier for people outside Australia has failed our founding principles of equality and diversification and it really upsets me. Oceania is full of incredibly rich culture, and an almost only Australian board is by far not a full representation of it, in my opinion. For this reason, I promise we will work harder to find a better solution or at least a workaround for next year. The resigning board has already started brainstorming interesting ideas, including opening nominations months before the elections and helping non-Australian candidates with the process, both through mentoring and covering any related expenses. You can get a better idea of what we’ve discussed in the last meeting’s minutes, which will be uploaded to the wiki this week. We still need to work on improving the process as much as possible, but rest assured we’re taking it very seriously. Of course, I am very interested in hearing any feedback or ideas you might have on this matter. I personally hope that those who couldn’t complete their nomination applications due to the strict timeline we imposed (and I deeply apologize for this) and the complexity of the ID process will still be interested in supporting us and trying again next year, as well as all the other non-Australian members who were put off by the process. We need all of Oceania to make OSGeo Oceania work! Have a lovely end of the year, enjoy the well-deserved holiday break, and to the new members, welcome aboard! I’m looking forward to our first board meeting together on Friday, December 13th! Ciao, Elisa
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