Foundation/AGM2023/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 this page, please (create an OSM wiki account and) add the page to your watchlist (press the star on the top of this page or alt+shift+w).

2023 Annual General Meeting and election to OpenStreetMap Foundation board - general information

Date and time of Annual General Meeting - voting closes

The next Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the OpenStreetMap Foundation will take place online on Saturday 9 December 2023, 16:00 UTC (countdown), unless rescheduled. This is also the time when voting for the board election will close. Voting will open exactly one week before the General Meeting.

Seats available

This meeting will have a board election, with three seats available (of Guillaume Rischard, Mikel Maron and Roland Olbricht, whose board terms are ending). The terms of Arnalie Vicario, Craig Allan, Mateusz Konieczny and Sarah Hoffmann will continue. There are seven seats on the foundation board.

Please note that Guillaume Rischard and Roland Olbricht have decided to rerun. Mikel Maron cannot rerun this time, according to the Foundation’s Articles of Association. All board members are volunteers.

Board members, when elected, typically serve for two years until their seat is up for re-election.

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

• "OSMF board – what are they even doing?" - talk by Mateusz Konieczny - current board member (2023-06)
• Mikel Maron - current board member (2022-10)
• Why run for the board - opinions of board members before the 2021 election (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)
• 2022 OSMF board - ask us anything session (2022)

Additional OSM Foundation resources

• OSM Foundation mission statement
• OSM Foundation responsibilities

Board candidates Eligibility criteria for board candidates Any person may be elected to become a board member, provided that: They are normal OSMF members1 28 days before the General Meeting, and they have been a normal member or associate2 member during the full 180 days3 before the General Meeting, and are willing to act as a board member, and are permitted by law to do so. 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. More information here. 3 180 days: OSMF membership start date before 12 June 2023, if the Annual General Meeting takes place on 9 December 2023, as scheduled. Finding the type of your OSMF membership (normal/associate) If you want to find out the type of your membership (Normal or Associate), please check the most recent approval/renewal membership email before emailing the volunteers of the Membership Working Group at membership@osmfoundation.org from the email address which is associated with your OSMF membership. Associate members who want to become board candidates You can change your OSMF membership from associate to normal membership by emailing the volunteers of the Membership Working Group at membership@osmfoundation.org Send your email from the email address which is associated with your OSMF membership. It is necessary to provide your residential address, which will be available to other OSMF members. Please change your membership type before adding your self-nomination to the candidates' table below. If you decide to be a candidate at the last minute, you can still add yourself as an associate member, but you have to change your membership type immediately after the submission period of self-nominations closes. In this case please email both membership@osmfoundation.org and dorothea@osmfoundation.org Thank you. Submission of self-nominations Submission of self-nominations closed on 2023-10-21, at 23:59 UTC. You can put yourself forward for the board election by and adding your information to the table. Please first check the eligibility criteria mentioned above. To edit this page you will need an OSM wiki account (create one here), which is different from your account on www.osm.org. If you need help, please email dorothea@osmfoundation.org with subject "2023 board election: self-nomination". The ordering of the answers and manifestos will follow the order of candidate self-nominations. List of board candidates Candidates will be ordered according to the order of their self-nominations. Self-nominations that are not eligible for board candidacy will be moved below the table, with a reason provided. Result Name Nationality Country of residence OSM Foundation member since* (will be confirmed**) OSMuser links {{User|OSM_username}} Elected Roland Olbricht German Germany 2012-08-23 (confirmed) drolbr (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.) Elected Guillaume Rischard Luxembourgish USA 2013-05-03 (confirmed) Stereo (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.) Elected Daniela (Dani) Waltersdorfer Jimenez Peruvian USA 2021-10-20 (confirmed) DW2515 (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.) Włodzimierz Bartczak Polish Poland 2020-05-01 (confirmed) Cristoffs (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.) Ivo Reano Italian Italy 2020-08-26 (confirmed) Jrachi (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.) Community questions for the candidates, upon which the official set of questions was based -- Official set of questions Answers to the official questions and manifestos Results ** If you can't find the start date of your OSMF membership please email the Membership Working Group or dorothea@osmfoundation.org from the email address associated with your OSMF membership. Confirmation of normal membership and start date by the Membership Working Group or the OSMF Administrative Assistant. Please do not confirm yourself. Self nominations that have been withdrawn Steve Coast Steve (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.) Provided information: US, USA, 2006-2016, 2019-10-03 Self nominations that are not eligible for this election Parker Seaman Strongthany (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.) Provided information: American, USA, 2017-01-17. Reason for no eligibility for this election: Parker Seaman joined as an OSMF member on 2023-10-18, and the new membership does not satisfy the eligibility criteria listed on this page (the membership has to start at least 180 days before the General Meeting, which will take place on 9 December 2023). Answering the official questions and writing a manifesto Facilitator: Chisom Ejeh will be the facilitator this year, with guidance from Michael Collinson. Chisom Ejeh is from Nigeria and started his OSM journey in 2017. He had been briefed on the facilitator role by Michael Collinson during the HOT elections. See the updates on 2023 board election facilitation, regarding the selection. Michael Collinson facilitated the questioning process of the OSMF elections from 2016 to 2022. See the section "Questions to Candidates" for the process. Candidates will be expected to send: their answers to the official questions (a .txt template file will be sent to them by the administrative assistant, to add their answers in) and their manifestos (position statements) ..to Chisom Ejeh (facilitator) and Dorothea Kazazi (administrative assistant) (chisomejeh@gmail.com, dorothea@osmfoundation.org) before 2023-11-12 2023-11-14 (NEW DEADLINE) at 23:59 UTC. The official questions (based on community questions) will become available by the end of November 5th. Formatting the answers and manifesto: Candidates will be asked to send their answers and manifestos in .txt files - a template .txt file will be sent to them to add their answers. Candidates can use the following MediaWiki formatting options: links, ordered/unordered lists, subheadings of level three (=== Subheading ===) or more, bold and italics. Kindly note that other MediaWiki formatting options, emojis and overformatting will likely be removed. This is to make sure that answers have similar readability due to formatting. Thank you. See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Cheatsheet for examples (not all options on that page can be applied here). The Administrative Assistant will send to the candidates a guide with information on how to check how their formatted text will look like. Manifesto (position statement): First time writing a manifesto? You can check manifestos of previous board candidates: 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018. Expected time needed to answer official questions: 3-11 hours (based on estimates provided by previous candidates). Expected time needed to write a manifesto: Unknown (previous candidates: feel free to add your estimates).

For OSMF members Who has the right 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 days4 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 4 90 days = Start date of your current membership is before Sunday 10 September 2023 in UTC, if the Annual General Meeting takes place on 9 December 2023, as scheduled. Active contributors: If you have an active contributor membership not based on mapping but on other contributions (had to be voted by the board) which ends between 31st of October to 10th of December 2023, make sure to renew it in time, as processing the renewal might take two weeks or more. 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 after 2023-12-02 16:00 UTC: one email for voting for the board election and on any normal/ordinary issues (possibly) a second email to vote for any special issues suggested by members (special resolutions). Only normal OSMF members can vote on special resolutions. The email will have a link to the online ballot. The election will follow the single transferable vote rules (STV - more at the link below). Each foundation member will vote by ranking candidates according to their preference. A maximum of three candidates will be elected. Please see the warning box at the top of this page. The page voting information and instructions has more details. The election results of the OpaVote platform will be independently verified by Michael Spreng (Membership Working Group volunteer). Voting on changes to the Articles of Association (AoA) or other changes Resolutions proposed by the board There are no resolutions proposed by the board yet. Resolutions proposed by OSMF members (need support by at least 5% of members eligible to vote) There are no resolutions proposed by the membership yet. 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. Questions to candidates Community members can submit questions to the board candidates, upon which the official set of questions will be based. The submission period will open on 11 October 2023 and close on 29 October ("by end of", in UTC). Questions will be added to the talk page or could be sent to the osmf-talk mailing list (for OSMF members - archive of emails viewable by all here). This year, as in previous years, we will have a structured question gathering process. We invited members to post their questions to Talk:Foundation/AGM2023/Election_to_Board, from 2023-10-11 up to 2023-10-29 ("by end of", in UTC) (see the bottom of this page for other key dates). The facilitator will gather the community questions, organised them and published an official set for the candidates at Talk:Foundation/AGM2023/Election_to_Board. Candidates then will submit their answers to the official questions and their manifestos directly to the facilitator and cc our administrative assistant. 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. All answers and manifestos will be compiled and published at once by the Administrative Assistant, Dorothea Kazazi. Discussion then will commence, until 2023-12-02 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." Facilitator: Chisom Ejeh is the facilitator of this election. Community reviews/discussions Links to related posts written by the community, combine with your own judgement. <placeholder>

Key dates

- Online calendar Please check the description of each event for exact dates and times. The table below is the authoritative source for any dates.

Dates/period	Notes/activity
until 2023-10-10	[Board] Arrange facilitator for candidates' questions and answers.
2023-10-11	[Community/Members] Start of submission of questions to board candidates.
2023-10-14	[Candidates] Start of submission of self-nominations on this OSM wiki page.
until 2023-10-18	[Community/Members] Discussion about any special/normal resolutions proposed by the board or some of the members.
2023-10-19	[Board] Deadline for finalisation of the text for any special/normal resolutions.
2023-10-21 23:59 UTC	[Candidates] Deadline for members to put themselves forward for the election by adding their information on the candidates' table of this OSM wiki page.
2023-10-25	[Members] Deadline for getting support for any member-suggested resolutions.
2023-10-26	[Board] Deadline for drafting the official General Meeting announcement, mentioning any special/normal resolutions suggested by either the board or the members.
2023-10-29 23:59 UTC	[Community/Members] Deadline for adding questions for the candidates to the talk page or to the osmf-talk mailing list.
2023-11-02 00:01 UTC	[Board] Soft deadline for official Annual General Meeting notice, including the text of resolutions (hard: Nov 9). The official notice will be sent to all members of the OpenStreetMap Foundation via email.
2023-11-05 23:59 UTC	[Candidates] Official set of questions to the candidates (based on community questions and questions from past years) to be published by the facilitator. The board candidates will also be notified via email.
2023-11-14 23:59 UTC (NEW DEADLINE)	[Candidates] Deadline for candidates to send answers to the official questions and their manifestos to the facilitator and copy the email to the administrative assistant (chisomejeh@gmail.com, dorothea@osmfoundation.org).
2023-11-20	Publication of candidates' 1) answers to the official set of questions and 2) their manifestos by the administrative assistant.
2023-11-21 to 2023-12-02 16:00 UTC	[Community/Members] Discussion about candidates' answers and manifestos.
2023-12-02 16:00 UTC	[Members] Voting opens for the board election and any resolutions (exactly 1 week before the Annual General Meeting).
2023-12-09 16:00 UTC	[Members] Start of the Annual General Meeting on IRC (first part) (join via browser). The General Meeting will reconvene on 2023-12-16 at 16:00 UTC.
2023-12-09 16:00 UTC 2023-12-16 15:00 UTC (new date and time)	[Members] Deadline for voting. (new date and time)
2023-12-16 16:00 UTC	[Members] Annual General Meeting (second part) and announcement of election results on IRC (join via browser).

Activity	Dates and times	Duration
[Community/Members] Addition of questions by community/members to OSM wiki (of the 19 days, the candidates' names will be known for 9 days).	2023-10-11 to 2023-10-29 23:59 UTC	~19 days
[Candidates] Submission of self-nominations on the OSM wiki.	2023-10-14 to 2023-10-21, 23:59 UTC	~7 days
[Members] Get support for any member-suggested resolutions (the wording must be already finalised).	until 2023-10-26
Facilitator to complete compiling the set of the official questions to the candidates.	2023-10-29 to 2023-11-05 23:59 (UTC)	~08 days
[Candidates] Board candidates to send their answers to the official questions and their manifestos to the facilitator and copy the email to the administrative assistant (chisomejeh@gmail.com, dorothea@osmfoundation.org).	2023-11-06 to 2023-11-12 23:59 UTC 2023-11-07 to 2023-11-14 23:59 UTC (Deadline extended)	~07 days
Administrative assistant to complete compiling the candidates' answers and manifestos and publish them.	2023-11-14 to 2023-11-20	~07 days
[Community/Members] Discussion about candidates' answers and manifestos.	2023-11-21 to 2023-12-02, 16:00 UTC	~11 days
[Members] Voting for board candidates and any resolutions.	2023-12-02 16:00 UTC to 2023-12-09 16:00 UTC 2023-12-16 15:00 UTC (New date and time)	7 14 days