Dear HOT Voting members, HOT staff, HOT volunteers and people interested in HOT, Humanitarian and Open Mapping,
I hope this message finds you and your loved ones well and healthy. I would like to present to you my end of term report as President of the Board. On 10 February 2021 I shared a detailed annual report for 2020. In this new report I would like to focus on challenges, ongoing efforts, key learnings and achievements.
Challenges
Of all the anticipated challenges while participating as a Board Member, a global pandemic was not on our list. It was a difficult and challenging time for Voting members and staff and the Board members were not an exception. Board members, like many other people, were facing difficult situations with loved ones getting infected, trying to find a balance between working from home and taking care of their families, among many other difficult situations.
This could be one of the reasons why not every Board member was contributing equally. Being part of a Board requires certain commitments such as time and asynchronous participation to be able to be part of the decision making process, often outside of Board meetings. Some Board members were not responsive or slow on providing feedback in discussions, this caused delays in progress and decision making.
My suggestion to future Board participants is to review in advance the Board Procedures and other relevant documentation to make sure you can commit to this two year period.
The Board usually meets at least once per year to have in person meetings and do planning together, these “in person” intensive meetings help with the Board relations and make efficient progress that sometimes can take weeks or even months in online meetings. In the last two years we were not able to have in person meetings and interactions in events, we tried to stay positive and motivated following the rules of the new normality, it was a challenge we had to live with and we tried to make the best of what we had available.
During this term the concern of a Board having certain skills was raised, it will be great to see certain expertise such as finance or law among others skills to support in the different committees. If current and future Board members do not have this expertise, having the support of advisors can help to fill those gaps. I strongly recommend considering the advisor figures in future discussions, other organizations already have them and I believe it will be of great help for the Board and the organization.
Ongoing Efforts
Transition and hand over meetings. Allen Gunn, who is a knowledgeable consultant from Aspiration Tech is helping the Board to organize, improve and communicate better. Allen will also be helping in the transition meetings we will be having with the new Board members so we can have a smooth transition and a reduced learning curve with the new Board so they can focus on the things that matter to the membership and the organization.
When the new members are elected we have a Buddy program in place so the new Board members can count on someone they can rely on and will make sure every question about the new role is answered or addressed. This is in addition to the transition gatherings we are already organizing.
Together with Inna Nogeste, Board Assistant, we prepared a list of topics that remain open and need to continue the conversation with the new Board members.
Key Learnings
From my side, I can share that I learned so much from my fellow Board members, from the voting members, from the staff and from working together with the Executive Director. Usually I like things done fast and I can be too practical but in an NGO like HOT things can be slower than I am used to, the main reason is that there are so many factors and people involved that things can take a lot longer. I learned I had to be patient and when the conditions are the right ones, then decisions can be taken.
For all future Voting members that consider being part of the Board one day, I strongly suggest you get familiar and study the Robert Rules of order. I didn’t know anything about them and it is a great tool to have efficient interactions in the meetings and in the decision making process of the Board. I also recommend attending Board meetings from HOT, OSMF, OsGeo and any other organization that matters to you. This is important to get familiar with Board rules and interaction. One of the things I suggested to the other Board members was to rotate every couple of months the responsibility for chairing the monthly Board meeting so everyone could practice and get familiar with the process. Unfortunately, even though the answer was positive it didn’t get any traction.
Achievements
Let me share below some of the achievements over the last few months:
Board Procedures.
After several months of work we were able to finalize the Board Procedures. The goal of this document is to help the Board to have guidelines that govern their work. The document was ratified on 21 July 2021.
HOT Europe registration.
After different conversations in the Board and Executive Committee meetings a message to the membership was sent to see their position and comments about registration in Europe. The feedback from the Voting members was positive so the Board extended a recommendation to proceed to register in Europe.
Code of Conduct Committee.
Reactivation of this committee to be up and running in case there is a need of support.
HOT East Africa Board.
After interviews conducted by Ben Abelshausen, Miriam Gonzalez and with the support of the rest of the Board members three members were selected to be part of HOT East Africa Board which was one of the requirements to be able to register locally.
New defined HOT Areas of impact.
The Board approved five focus areas for HOT’s work. This exercise to reduce eleven to five focus areas was supported by input from participatory exercises such as the Theory of change. The new areas are listed below:
*Disasters & Climate Resilience
*Sustainable Cities & Communities
*Public Health
*Gender Equality
*Migration Displacement
Collaboration in defining and review OKRs (Objectives and Key Results).
It is the first time the organization is defining OKRs, this is a major step forward to be able to track progress and enable measurable goals. The Board was able to support this process and request a presentation of the advances from HOT’s leadership team. More details in the next point.
HOT Leadership team presentation to the Board and Voting Members.
The complete HOT leadership team presented the advances, challenges and plans to achieve their goals in their own areas. This is a very important transparency exercise so Voting and Board members have interactions and receive information not only from the Executive Director but also from the people responsible from the different areas in the HOT organization and Regional Hubs.
MoU signed with OsGeo
This is a collaboration I am very excited about, open source is at the heart of the HOT Community. In different regions it is common that local communities and voting members already participate in both HOT and OsGeo so formalizing the collaboration is a great step forward to continue building open source tools and run more projects with an open source focus. The Goals of the partnerships are the following:
A. Communicating about HOT’s tools on OSGeoLive.
B. Promoting development of open geospatial communities in HOT priority countries, OSGeo local chapters working together with the Regional Mapping Hubs
C. Promoting the use of open source geospatial tools (such as Geonode and QGIS) in HOT projects and with the humanitarian mapping community
D. Showing visibility of partners on both sides during events
E. Working together over conferences including HOT Summit & FOSS4G
If you want to read more details please check https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/MOU_HOT
Participated in the Organization Growth
Last but not least, something that makes me very proud is that I was able to support and oversaw the organization’s work during a period of unprecedented growth and scaling at HOT.
Some personal additional notes:
When I started participating in OpenStreetMap back in 2014, I never imagined how OpenStreetMap and HOT would become such an important part of my life. I am honored to have had the opportunity to be President of the Board of Directors. Being inside the organization during these times felt both gratifying and also sometimes intimidating with so many things happening around you that could impact the future of at least 1 billion people. Over the past two years during the pandemic we witnessed how companies and organizations were struggling to survive. We are already initiating the second year of the Audacious project and we are already witnessing important actions such as the Open Mapping Hubs starting operations in Asia-Pacific and Eastern-Southern Africa. Local communities will be leading and defining their priorities to ensure the project is self-sustainable thanks to local knowledge and local participants. I want to think one step further and plant the seed to start thinking about how this data can create social entrepreneurship in these 94 countries so more people can create wealth that can bring more people out of poverty. I am sure that my dream of a better future for those people who are still missing from the world’s maps will become a reality.
People have been asking me if I would run again, sure! One day I will be glad to serve again, but at this moment in my life I need to focus on other geospatial and personal projects. One of these projects is collaborating in the FIRE Forum (Forum for Innovation and Research in European Earth Observation) as Earth Observation evangelist, the goal is to promote the adoption of Earth Observation Data and technologies so Europe can achieve the goal to become Climate Neutral by 2050. The other, of course, involves working together with the rest of Geochicas about how we visualize the future of the Geochicas initiative.
I would like to thank Ben, Felix, Kate, Maning, Rob and Trudy for being incredible Board colleagues and especially Tyler, I enjoyed working together and learned so much during this collaboration. So many different backgrounds, experiences and points of view gave this Board its strength. Regardless of the times the world is going through we were able to have significant progress in different topics.
Last but not least I want to thank all the Voting members who trusted me and gave me their vote to be part of the Board. I hope I didn’t disappoint you but there is always space for improvement so if you want to reach out and provide your feedback, I would be glad to have a conversation with you.
Stay well, I hope to see you in someplace in the world and in future events. Let’s continue growing together in this Geospatial and Open Mapping journey.
Gracias, Thanks, Merci, Asante Sana, Salamat,
Miriam González
President, Board of Directors 2019-2021
Humanitarian OpenStreetMap
@mapanauta