I'm pleased to announce that the OSM Board has new leaders filling critical roles in our organization.

During the past few months, I've spearheaded a project inside Open Source Matters (OSM) to delineate clear roles and responsibilities for a few important positions within our organization.  The goal of this project was to enable our team to more effectively match board members' talents with positions that set them up for success and provided clear objectives and responsibilities.  By putting this project into action, Board members are able to clearly understand what is expected of them within each position, as well as measure their success more objectively with metrics developed by them and their fellow teammates.

This project also provides the Board an opportunity to have a written understanding of the scope these positions.  In the professionalizing of our Board, I strongly believe that actually writing down these positions roles and responsibilities are key to us achieving our goals, and keeping our sanity.  I've even gone as far as to tell candidates for Board positions that one of their key goals should be to find ways to make themselves "obsolete", or in other words, ensure that when it's time for them to hand over their leadership position to another colleague, the new leader can focus on innovation rather than needing to rebuild systems from scratch.

In this effort, I've been able to outline the responsibilities for the following positions:  Community Liaison, Trademark Team Liaison, Events Team Leader, Public Relations Liaison, Shop Liaison, Legal Affairs Liaison, and Capital Committee Chair (sponsorships).  I look forward to providing the community further insight into these roles soon, as some of them still need further vetting by the Board.

I like to think of this process like pairing a good wine with an evening's dinner.  I want to make sure that we fill these leadership positions by finding individuals that have the proper background, proven skill sets, and exciting vision for a future that raises us to a new level of success.

Today, I'm pleased to announce that the our OSM Board has appointed members to fill critical roles in our organization, including the following positions:

• Community Liaison - Steve Burge
• Trademark Team Liaison - Marko Milenovic
• Events Team Leader - Robert Deutz

Here's an overview of each of these positions.  Please note that these aren't all the tasks that these new leaders will be taking on, but they do represent some of the important tasks they'll be tackling in their new positions.

Community Liaison

The Community Liaision is the Board member assigned with the primary responsibility of handling relations between OSM and the wider Joomla! community, and is tasked with the following responsibilities:

• creating official communications for OSM
  
• ensuring the Joomla! community understands and is informed of OSM's public decisions
• liaising with the Joomla! community to provide an idea conduit between the community and OSM
• assisting the Leadership Team with communications and marketing where requested
• liaising with the Leadership Team and any outside public relations consultants to help ensure clear communication from the Joomla! project
• providing monthly update on the joomla.org website of OSM activities

Trademark Team Liaison

The Trademark Team Liaison plays an important role in sharing information between the Trademark Team and the OSM Board, and is tasked with the following responsibilities:

• providing guidance and leadership on trademark questions from the Trademark Team
• informing the OSM Board of trends and feedback from the Trademark Team
• advising the OSM Board on issues facing the Trademark Team
• overseeing the provisioning of resources requested of OSM by the Trademark Team

Events Team Leader

The Events Team Leader is the individual handling relations between the worldwide Joomla! events teams, taking an active leadership role in any OSM originating events, and is tasked with the following responsibilities:

• managing the approval and oversight of Joomla!Days
• providing communications relationships with new potential conference and speaking engagement opportunities
• creating a budget for each year's events
• helping lead the building of updated materials that can be used at Joomla! events
• leading liaison relations with the Joomla! World Conference local organizing team
  

I'd personally like to thank Steve, Marko, and Robert for sharing their skills with our team and the community.  I'm excited to see our next generation of leaders carry the torch forward, and I look forward to empowering them with the tools they need to take us to the next level!