Inclusive OSGeo Charter membership - invite your team

In response to community suggestions in previous years, the OSGeo board has updated the voting process for OSGeo Charter Membership to be more inclusive. In particular, there is now no upper cap on the number of new Charter Members who can be voted in. This will avoid the disappointing situation where we our process denied respected community members from charter membership because we didn't have enough slots.  Now, new charter members need only demonstrate positive OSGeo attributes as confirmed by existing Charter Members.

The official responsibilities of Charter Members is very light, consisting of voting in the OSGeo Board and other OSGeo Charter members. However, it is also a way we officially acknowledge the number of volunteers who help out in many ways with OSGeo activities.

So now the process is updated, I encourage existing Charter Members and community leaders to be proactive about nominating people from their community.

Here is an email I sent to people within the OSGeo-Live community:

OSGeo-Live contributors,
As you have probably seen, the voting process for new OSGeo charter members has changed in order to ensure OSGeo charter membership is more inclusive and representative of the greater OSGeo membership.In line with this new direction, I'd like to nominate all active OSGeo-Live contributors for OSGeo Charter membership.I believe all active contributors that I've worked with meet the recommended membership selection criteria [1] which includes:

• Previous participation in or support of OSGeo activities (you have contributed to OSGeo-Live) 

• The person should already have made a contribution to free and open source geospatial software, education or open data. (you have contributed to OSGeo-Live)

• The person should be willing to put in time and effort on the Foundation, perhaps joining committee(s), or volunteering in some other way that gets the Foundation going. (Do you wish to continue contributing?) 

• Members should believe in the general goals of the Foundation. To support and promote the use of free and open source geospatial software, education and data in a collaborative manner. (I expect this is the case, as you have committed to OSGeo-Live license requirements) 

• Members selected should provide a diversity of geographic regions, diversity of projects, diversity of programming languages and diversity of interests e.g., corporate, hobbyist, educational, scientific. (Lots of project, language and geographic diversity in OSGeo-Live)

• Members should be prepared to work constructively and positively towards the goals of the Foundation. Good teamwork skills are an asset. (All OSGeo-Live contributors I've worked with fit this criteria)

If you are ok being nominated, then please email me to let me know. Ideally, can you please also point at your OSGeo Advocate profile which I can reference when nominating you. (You might need to create your profile first).
[1] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Membership_Process#Positive_Attributes
[2] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OSGeo_Advocate#Process_for_becoming_an_OSGeo_Advocate