Volunteer letter of recommendation

= [DRAFT] OSGeo Volunteer Letter of Recommendation [DRAFT] =

Scope
This wiki page summarizes content for an OSGeo letter of reference for volunteer work wihtin OSGeo.

Motivation

 * Letters of recommendation (LoR) can be useful for OSgeo volunteers as a means to prove their OSGeo-related activities to third parties, e.g. when sending in a resume for a new position.
 * LoR should be available both to active volunteers and persons retiring from OSGeo.

Workflow and data sources

 * LoR should be easy to create, ideally in an (semi-)automated workflow.
 * Content for a specific LoR can be harvested from the volunteers personal OSGeo wiki page (if existing):
 * 1) Name
 * 2) Address / city / state / country
 * 3) Email
 * 4) Local Chapter
 * 5) OSGeo experience and roles
 * Note: This might be an opportunity to improve the metadata concept of the personal wiki pages: The wiki pages seem to have currently no metadata-tags for the committes and projects (community projects / projects-undergoing-incubation / graduated projects). Also, there is no metadata on when a person was elected as a charter member and when that person retired.
 * For each of the badges displayed under "OSGeo experience and roles" we could set up short general description as templates.
 * There should be a general template for the LoR (general outline / structure of the letter)
 * tbd

Request process for a LoR

 * To prevent abuse (e.g. preposterous claims in a LoR, discrediting the OSGeo communit as a whole), some kind of human checking / editing will be required.
 * LoR could be edited by a OSGeo committee, to prevent flooding the Board with such requests.
 * tbd