jcahn2 wrote on Sunday, July 31, 2011:
Ahoy all.
As per the suggestion Rod Roark, I am moving this portion of an organizational thread form the developer’s forum. I had suggested that we have a much more inclusive membership policy for oemr.org with minimal requirements. This should help to ensure that we get more complete information about the oemr.org and likewise OpenEMR project communities and guidance for both of these entities going forward.
Rod had this concern about community representation:
"I don’t see how we’re in a position to be voting here on behalf of the community. That raises a huge swarm of issues that can keep us busy for a long time, and to what end I have no idea. "
Yes Rod, it gives me vertigo ;>)
The way I see it, in a true democracy, decisions are made by the majority, but some decisions are instead made by specific entities because they require expertise. The space program e.g. was pretty much accomplished without my vote on the specifics. It would never have lifted off the ground if the general public had to vote on solid vs liquid fuel. So the challenge here is how do we obtain steerage from the community at large, and preserve the efficiency and wisdom of the developers, spiritual leaders, and major contributors to oemr.org and to the project? Well first, we will need to define the community. We have a starting point in the list of forum registrants. Certainly this identifies a group with demonstrated interest. It includes users, developers, vendors, and donors.
What about the makeup of the oemr.org board of directors. Currently it is an internal voting process. Should it be determined by the community at large, or only paying members? How about decisions regarding the hosting and format of the home pages, forums, and wikis? There have been opinions expressed on the forums but there is no way to measure the community’s feelings at present.
What about Shameem’s point about weighting votes based upon the number of users that a vendor represents? I don’t think we can go there without identifying those users, but if there were a low barrier entry to a voting status, then Shameem could encourage all those folks to make their opinions heard.
OK, I’m thinking out loud here to encourage some input. I do believe that membership categories as currently defined are too restrictive. I would like to see a membership list (besides just forum participants) in place as soon as we can, because with the imminent attainment of meaningful use ONC certification, the project will have the luxury of focusing on needs that had been temporarily suppressed and should have some community guidance going forward. Long rambling post. Mea culpa, Jack