# Response to HOT Questions

Hi HOT members,

Here's my response to the questions posted by Arnalie and Enock in the Wiki. Rather than being prescriptive, I would like for the board and members to reflect on how we currently operate in the context of the questions raised and define processes to respond to these concerns.

Looking forward to talking to everyone in the Q&A session.

> What are your opinions on a board member applying for a staff position, and a previous staff applying for board position?

Any current member interested to apply for a staff position and vise-versa should resign from their current position before submitting their intent to apply. This is clearly a conflict of interest (COI) and we have policies around it [0]. In terms of specific timelines, this should be up for debate within the organization. I am however, not against anyone applying for staff positions whether a previous board member or a voting member. Being part of the organization, is a recognition of the person's skills and passion for HOT and they are well qualified to apply.

Related to my intent to become a board member for this period, I declare that I have no interest to apply for any HOT staff position at this time. But I do want to raise that I am currently employed at Mapbox and actively involved in OSM related work within the company.

Most of you probably know that Mapbox is a huge supporter of OpenStreetMap and HOT [1]. Mapbox uses OSM to power a lot of our services and we care about the community and the quality of data. This may be viewed by some as a potential COI, but I want to clarify that I am not directly involved in strategic partnerships around HOT and Mapbox at this time. Mikel Maron is our company rep who takes care of such engagements.

> How will your election to the board eliminate racism or support anti-racism in geospatial work/narratives related to HOT (projects, publicity materials, etc)?

Racism should never be part of this organization. The core of our work is centered around "Openness, collaboration and participation" [2]. If you've experienced racism within HOT, please speak up, we have mechanisms and processes to address this [3].

That said, I recognize that people's worldviews are products of their own lived experiences. We have our own biases, opinions and assumptions. It is important to recognize this within ourselves and speak up. In practical terms, I would like for everyone to re-read our Code of Conduct (CoC). Do you think we have a clear statement denouncing racism in how we engage? Do you believe we should be more explicit?

> What's your take on HOT overwriting local OSM commuities with existing volunteer efforts before a project by creating HOT <City/Country>; and how do you envision the structure of new local/country chapters to be created as part of the Audacious project?
> How would you address conflicting issues arising between HOT <Country> vs OSM <Country>?

I'll answer both questions here since I think these are interrelated.

Who is the community? Perhaps the confusion lies with how we define communities. HOT should clearly define who these communities are before doing any engagement. In the context of humanitarian development, most agencies and NGOs prefer to engage with formal structures. Structures allow us to define scope of collaboration, identify deliverables based on the committed capacity and assign accountability if things don't go right. This is already hard and more so with non-formal and online groups. Many OSM communities even within certain countries do not have such formal structures. Should we ignore them because it is inconvenient? Certainly not. There are good approaches already built by HOT itself (i.e. micro-grants) and other initiatives in other parts of the world. I think we should invest more in creative approaches for HOT to enable non-formal communities. However, I'm not advocating for formalizations of groups as the only path.
In certain cases, it does more harm than good. Each community is unique and we need to find ways to work with them.

Second point on conflicting issues. Are there concrete cases when this has happened? I would like to know more to be able to respond. But generally for any projects we intend to implement, I would like to put forward another principle grassroots organizations working with marginalized communities have adopted and that is "free prior and informed consent" (FPIC) [4]. There's a lot to unpack here and I encourage everyone to check the literature (a starting point is the wikipedia I linked). But broadly, this principle lays the foundation for a truly collaborative and open approach to engagement with local communities. The origins were based on the struggles of the Indigenous Peoples but elements of the principle certainly apply to OSM communities as well. I would love to have this principle included in how HOT works in the future.

cheers,

Maning

[0] https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B65TOMtm9My4WTdEbEZMRlQwaWs/view
[1] https://blog.mapbox.com/our-commitment-to-the-humanitarian-openstreetmap-team-46d1dce1b2ad
[2] https://www.hotosm.org/code-of-conduct
[3] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xb-SPADtSbgwl6mAgglHMPHpknt-E7lKRoIcSbW431A/edit
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free%2C_prior_and_informed_consent