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)

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.