Committee Chair Guidelines

This is a proposed list of guidelines for OSGeo committee chairs on effective operation of their committees OSGeo style. A refactored version of this description is at Committee Guidelines.

Hints and Tips

• Make sure you committee subdomain (ie. incubator.osgeo.org) has a bit of content indicating the mission of the committee, the members and pointers to other documents.
• Blow away all unneeded mailing lists. But there should be at least one mail committee email list with all members (and any other interested parties) subscribed.
• Meetings should generally be via IRC, and announced well in advance by email on the committee mailing list. Use the World Clock like 1600 UTC to indicate time in all time zones.
• Recurring meeting times are desirable, and should be noted in the Foundation Calendar.
• Meetings should have an agenda prepared ahead of time, usually in the wiki.
• Generally speaking any interested parties should be welcomed to joining committee mailing lists, speak, and join IRC meetings. In IRC meetings the Chair will sometimes need to exert influence to keep discussions on topic and meetings progressing. Off topic discussions can be directed back to the mailing list.
• While input from all is welcome, a committee is an official body of the foundation, and should keep good track of it's own voting members. Committee members can be added and removed from the committee by motion in a duely established meeting.
• Generally speaking folks with skills and interest should be welcomed to join a committee. A large committee that isn't having problems reaching consensus is generally a good thing, if all or most members are actually contributing to the work of the committee. And the "cost" of inactive members is not high.
• Note that anyone can become a committee member. Voting Members of OSGeo have no special status at the committee level, and we wish to encourage any qualified member of the community to get involved in committees.
• Know your committees mandate. Generally a committee is formed by a motion of the board of directors, and that motion will include details on the responsibilities and role of the committee.

Decision Making

By and large OSGeo committees should be operated on a consensus basis. If a committee members is strenuously objecting to something, all reasonable efforts should be made to hear their objections, and adapt policy in some commonly acceptable way. If that proves not to be possible a motion can be passed by a majority of committee assembled for a duely announced meeting. If voting is close enough that it is hard to know whether something has passed then consensus has not been achieved.

For non-trivial matters it is encouraged that official motions of the committee be well formed and clear. For complex policies, they ought to be written up in advance of a meeting so the committee members have an opportunity to review them in advance.

When voting it is traditional to indicate support as "+1", a veto as "-1", weak support as "+0", and weak lack of support as "-0". If a motion isn't getting +1's from the majority of those present and voting perhaps it requires further discussion.

Chair's run meetings and should excercise some distretion in soliciting motions, when to declare the motion passed or whether to defer a controversial motion for further discussion and a vote at a later meeting (if it is felt that important parties are missing from the discussion).

Administrivia

• Chairs are technically assigned by the board of directors. If a chair is resigning, or if the committee would like to select a new chair, a motion on the topic should be fielded at a committee meeting and the result forwarded to the board for approval. Generally speaking there is no reason a new chair wouldn't be accepted by the board and this should be a formality. There should be no harm in the new chair acting as chair till this is finalized.
• Ultimately all foundation committees serve at the pleasure of the board. That is to say, ultimately the board can provide direction to a committee by an official motion of the board. This might be altering policy, membership, chairmanship, or the existance of the committee. Generally speaking the worst the board will do is assign a work item to a committee that falls in it's mandate. On the other hand, individual board members cannot direct a committee.