Foundation/AGM21/Election to Board

OpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF) members will vote to elect a new board at the Annual General Meeting in December.

If you want to get notified about any changes to the page, please (create an OSM wiki account and) add the page to your watchlist.

Election to board

Seats available

This meeting will have a board election, with four seats available (of A. Mustard, A. R. McCann, G. Rischard and M. Maron). Meanwhile the terms of Eugene Alvin Villar, Jean-Marc Liotier and Tobias Knerr, continue. There are a total of seven seats on the foundation board.

What the board is/is not, rules and responsibilities

• Scope of the OSMF board.
• Board Rules of Order
• These were the roles and responsibilities for the OSMF board, agreed in the 2014 board face-to-face meeting.

A lot of the foundation's work is done by the volunteers of our working groups, and if you want to help the foundation, you can also look at joining those.

Personal views

• Why run for the board - opinions of current board members (2021-08)
• Joost Schouppe - past board member (2019-10)
• Frederik Ramm - past board member (2019-11, see also previous 2017 post)
• Heather Leson - past board member (2019-11)

Additional OSM Foundation resources

• OSM Foundation mission statement
• OSM Foundation responsibilities

Candidates

Submission of self-nominations closed on 23 October (end of, in UTC)
Please put yourself forward for the board election by editing the page and adding your information to the table below. You will need an OSM wiki account (create one here), which is different from your OSM account. If you need help, please email dorothea@osmfoundation.org with subject "2021 board election: self-nomination".

List

Result	Name	Nationality	Country of residence	OSMF member since (will be confirmed*)	OSMuser links
Elected	Guillaume Rischard	Luxembourgish	USA	2013-05-03 (confirmed)	Stereo (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.)
	Michal Migurski	U.S. + Polish	USA	2016-07-28 (confirmed)	migurski (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.)
Elected	Amanda McCann	European Union/Irish	Germany	2013-09-07 (confirmed)	Amᵃᵖanda (᚛ᚐᚋᚐᚅᚇᚐ᚜ 🏳️‍🌈 on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.)
Elected	Mikel Maron	American	USA	2007-06-09 (confirmed)	Mikel (mikelmaron on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.)
Elected	Roland Olbricht	German	Germany	2012-08-23 (confirmed)	drolbr (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.)
	Bryan Housel	U.S. + Slovakia	United States	2015-09-18 (confirmed)	bhousel (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.)
All candidates have now responded to the official set of questions and their answers per question and their manifestos are linked from this page.

* Confirmation of normal membership and start date by the Membership Working Group or the OSMF Administrative Assistant. Please do not confirm yourself.

Eligibility criteria for board candidates

Any person may be elected to become a board member, provided that:

• they have been a normal member¹ (not associate member²) during the full 180 days before the General Meeting (normal membership start date before 14 June 2021).
• are willing to act as a board member, and
• are permitted by law to do so.

If you want to find out the type of your membership (normal or associate), please check the most recent approval/renewal membership emails or email the volunteers of the Membership Working Group at membership@osmfoundation.org.

Confirmation of normal membership and start membership date will be made by the Membership Working Group or the OSMF Administrative Assistant.

¹ Normal members provide their full residential address and can vote on all issues. Their residential address may be disclosed to other members.
² Associate members provide just their country of residence and can vote - but not on all issues. Additionally, they cannot be board candidates. More information here.

Questions to Candidates

• Official set of questions for candidates

Submission of community questions to the board candidates closed on 2 November ("end of", in UTC).

This year (based on past discussions on osmf-talk and within the board) we will have a structured question gathering process.

1. We invite members to post their questions to Talk:Foundation/AGM21/Election_to_Board, from 2021-10-13 up to 2021-11-02 ("by end of", in UTC) (see the bottom of this page for other key dates).
2. Michael Collinson, who will act as a facilitator, will gather the community questions, organise them and will publish an official set for the candidates at Talk:Foundation/AGM21/Election_to_Board.
3. Candidates then will submit their answers to the official questions and their manifestos directly to him and cc our administrative assistant (mike@ayeltd.biz, dorothea@osmfoundation.org). It will be up to the candidates to answer all the questions or just a few of them, but our suggestion is to answer all of them.
4. All answers and manifestos will be published at once by either the facilitator or the board.
5. Discussion then will commence, until 2021-12-04 16:00 UTC when voting will open.

"We expect this to be the official election campaign process. We won't restrict members to continue to talk on our members' mailing list nor will we restrict candidates to continue discussions, but we don't encourage them to do so. The official answers and questions thereof should be what voters use to judge."

Expected time needed to answer official questions: 9-11 hours (based on estimates provided by 2018 candidates).

Facilitator: Michael Collinson was active 2006-2014ish as a board member, board secretary, SotM and chair of the Licensing Working Group. More recently, he acted as an election observer for HOT and OSM US. Active mapper from 2005 till now. (Source)

Manifesto (position statement)

Candidates will be expected to send their manifestos (position statements), together with their answers to the official questions, to the facilitator and the administrative assistant.

Expected time needed to write a manifesto: Unknown (@2020 candidates: feel free to add your estimates).

First time writing a manifesto? You can check manifestos of previous board candidates:

• 2020 (table)
• 2019 (table)
• 2018 (table)
• 2017 (table)
• 2016 (table)

Voting - election to board

Members eligible to vote

All normal members and associate members (including members who joined via the active contributor membership program) have the right to vote provided that:

• they were a member or associate member throughout the period of 90 days³ prior to the date on which the meeting is held; and
• their membership account was not in arrears 7 days prior to the date on which the general meeting is held

³ You can vote if the start date of your current membership is before Saturday, 11 September 2021 23:59 UTC.

Special cases: Active contributor members (non-mapping) whose memberships end between November 01 to December 11 2021

If

• you became a member via the active contributor program selecting non-mapping contributions (so you didn't have more than 42 mapping days in the past year to become a member automatically) AND
• your membership start date was between 01 November 2020 to 11 December 2020,

then your membership will be up for renewal before the Annual General Meeting.

If you still have less than 42 mapping days in the past year, you might want to re-apply for your membership before the start of November 2021, so that your application will be processed in time.

Voting process

The voting process will be similar to previous years.

Members of the OpenStreetMap Foundation who are eligible to vote will receive one or two emails from the online voting service:

• one email for voting for the board election and on any normal/ordinary issues
• (possibly) a second email to vote for any special issues (special resolutions). Only normal members can vote on special resolutions.

• The email(s) will have links to the online ballot for each ballot measure. The election will follow the single transferable vote rules (STV). Each foundation member will vote by ranking candidates according to their preference. A maximum of four candidates will be elected.

The page voting information and instructions will have more details.

Voting on changes to Articles of Association (AoA) or other changes

This year members will be voting on (at least) one special resolution. ("Special resolution" has the meaning given in section 283 of the Companies Act 2006).

• Voting to change the Articles of Association (AoA) (special resolutions): Only normal members can vote. The changes to the Articles of Association require a majority of 75% of votes to pass.
• Voting for other changes: Other resolutions, that are not changes to the Articles of Association, only require a majority of 50% of votes to pass. Both normal and associate members can vote.

* Normal members provide their full residential address and can vote on all issues. Their residential address may be disclosed to other members.
* Associate members provide just their country of residence and can vote - but not on all issues. Additionally, they cannot be board candidates. More information here.

Resolutions proposed by the board

Resolutions proposed by the board that members will vote on will be listed here.

• Special resolution (changing the OSMF Articles of Association ): Count time as associate member for board candidacy requirements

Resolutions proposed by OSMF members (need support by at least 5% of members eligible to vote)

OSM Foundation members can submit resolutions and ask the membership to vote on them.

Please read: Companies Act 2006: Members' power to require circulation of written resolution and see the key dates below.

Key dates

Calendar: https://framagenda.org/apps/calendar/p/HipJHmLDr9Kw2DCM/dayGridMonth/2021-10-01

Dates/period	Notes/activity
2021-10-13	[Community/Members] Start of submission of questions to board candidates.
2021-10-16	[Candidates] Start of submission of self-nominations on OSM wiki page.
until 2021-10-12	[Board] Arrange facilitator for candidates' questions and answers.
until 2021-10-20	[Members] Discussion about special/normal resolutions.
2021-10-21	[Board] Deadline for finalisation of special/normal resolutions text.
2021-10-23 "by the end of" (UTC)	[Candidates] Deadline for members to put themselves forward for election by adding their information on the candidates' table of OSM wiki page.
2021-10-27	[Members] Deadline for getting support for any member-suggested resolutions.
2021-10-28	[Board] Deadline for drafting official announcement mentioning the special/normal resolutions.
2021-11-02 "by the end of" (UTC)	[Members] Deadline for adding questions for the candidates to talk page or to the osmf-talk mailing list.
2021-11-04 00:01 UTC	[Board] Soft deadline for official Annual General Meeting notice, including the text of resolutions (hard: Nov 11). The official notice will be sent to all members of the OpenStreetMap Foundation via email.
2021-11-07 "by the end of" (UTC)	[Candidates] Official set of questions to candidates (based on community questions and questions from past years) to be published by facilitator. The board candidates will also be notified via email.
2021-11-14 23:59 UTC	[Candidates] Deadline for candidates to send answers to the official questions and their manifestos to facilitator and cc the administrative assistant.
2021-11-19	1) Candidates' answers to the official set of questions and 2) their manifestos will be published by the facilitator or the board.
2021-11-20 to 2021-12-04 16:00 UTC	[Community] Discussion about candidates' answers and manifestos.
2021-12-04 16:00 UTC	[Members] Voting opens for board election and resolutions (exactly 1 week before AGM).
2021-12-11 16:00 UTC	[Members] Deadline for voting. Start of Annual General Meeting on IRC (join via browser).

Duration	Activity
days	[Membership] Discussion about suggested special/normal resolutions.
~9 days	[Candidates] Submission of nominations on OSM wiki.
~22 days	[Community] Addition of questions by community members to OSM wiki (of which, 3 days where the candidates' names will be known).
~05 days	Facilitator to complete compiling the set of official questions to candidates.
~08 days	[Candidates] Candidates to send answers to the official questions and their manifestos to facilitator and cc the administrative assistant.
~05 days	Facilitator to complete compiling the answers and manifestos from candidates.
~15 days	[Community] Discussion about candidates' answers.
7 days	[Members] Voting for board candidates and resolutions.

Additional information

Will be added to: https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Annual_General_Meetings/2021

Detailed results of the election and resolutions

Detailed results will be available on the OSMF website after the Annual General Meeting.