Joining the OSGeo board

I feel quite humbled and very honoured to have been voted onto the OSGeo Board. I'll do my best to live up to what I believe are the expectations of a board member.That is:

• I believe a board should listen to the community, work out what is the best for the community, then vote accordingly.
• We need to recognise the limited time constraints of (already busy) board members. If most decisions are deferred to a 9  member board, then we are wasting the potential of the 1000s of OSGeo volunteers, and 100s of OSGeo charter members. So primarily, a board's role should purely be a job of oversight, validating decisions made in OSGeo's various committees and projects.
• It is important to discuss ideas, but even more important is to follow through with solid actions, and I believe it is important to look for opportunities to enable volunteers to make a difference. It is important to work out ways to collate our volunteer efforts effectively and efficiently to make something much bigger than one person can do on their own. Effectively, the OSGeo Board should make way for OSGeo volunteers being more effective.
• It is good for a board to have a breadth of experience and opinions, but even more important is for a board to be able to work together effectively to make decisions. This means that at times, each board member will need to compromise, because a compromise is almost always better than making no decision at all.