Foundation/Local Chapters/OSMUK/Elections/2019

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What's the board?

OSMUK has 5 volunteer Directors who meet by teleconference once a month. The Directors are responsible for the administration of the company and financing projects. To get fresh ideas and energy, 2 Directors stand down each year and are replaced. The departees may stand for re-election.

June 2019 election

Procedure

Nominations

Nomination were via email to the board prior to 31 May 2019.

Elections

The election is via Single Transferable Vote. Details are sent directly to those OSMUK members who are eligible to vote. To be eligible to vote, individuals needed to be members at least 30 days prior to the Annual General Meeting (i.e. by the end of Wednesday, 29 May 2019) and they must be fully up to date with their membership fee (i.e. not in arrears).

Candidates

As of the 31st May deadline for nominations for the two vacancies for Directors we had received just two valid nominations: Steve Richardson and Gareth Ling. The rules of Single Transferable Voting systems are such that if there are as many seats as remaining candidates, these candidates are elected. Steve and Gareth’s appointment was confirmed at the annual general meeting (AGM).

Gareth Ling

OSM User: gnesss.

Gareth is a control and automation test engineer by day in the midlands. First getting introduced to OpenStreetMap contributing following a request for people to work on a Humanitarian OSM task at his work place, He then saw that there was plenty to update, enhance and improve in his home town. Spreading the word on the benefits of the OSM database and explaining how it feeds forward into so many other services is an increasing occurrence. Gareth has a particular interest that modern mapping services do not become overly highway centric and that things like footpaths, cycleways and pedestrian shortcuts, along with parks and pedestrian amenities are added and recorded.

Steve Richardson

OSM User: steverichardson

Website:

Twitter:

I have been a teacher for 36 years, of Geography and also managing whole school pupil progress data - so lots of Excel and a fair bit of database work. In my last ten years teaching I started to introduce GIS into my lessons (QGIS) and also made inroads into getting pupils involved with Missing Maps - something in which I have participated several times. I retired in December 2016, but by the end of January 2017 had been "head-hunted" by ESRI UK Education Team to work on producing resources for their schools offer, making a variety of maps and map-based products (e.g. StoryMaps). That contract ended after six months, but I do freelance GIS training for teachers and schools, most recently with University of Buckingham QTS trainees.  So, I guess my aim is to get people mapping, and to use maps within their daily lives and to be creative in making the most of what is out there in the real world and in terms of open data.

Note that since Steve put his candidacy forward he has been elected vice-chair of governors at my local comprehensive and also "elevated" to the position of chair of the "Data, Pupil Premium and Disadvantaged Specialist Group". He recognises that his work load is quite a lot heavier than it was two months ago and that his workload within OSM UK would have to be very limited. We have asked him to stay on as a candidate to allow for some competition. Minimal Board input is the 1 hour conference call each year and our members are encouraged to volunteer time to delivering the OSM UK aims (e.g. in a similar way to how OSMF has working groups).