Proposal: Shift election cycle back six months

[Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org>]

Hi all,

This is an issue various previous Boards have discussed, and it came up very
briefly during GUADEC this year, but I'm going to do the bullet-taking thing
I enjoy so much, and propose it here for real. :-)

Currently the GNOME election process runs from November to December, and the
new Board starts in January. GUADEC has traditionally been in June and July.

This utterly sucks because the Board has to wait *six months* before it gets
a face-to-face meeting. The f2f is always a formative and energising process
for the Board, and it would really help to have one much closer to the start
of the Board's term. In the past we've discussed the idea of a Board retreat
early in the year... *But* that would cost Real Money to fly everyone to the
same place. Considering we already have GUADEC, I think that's a huge waste.

So here's the proposal: I'd like to suggest we shift the election cycle back
six months, landing the process in May and June [1]. More controversially, I
reckon the best way to achieve this without a lot of pain would be to extend
the current Board's term by six months.

There is no clear avenue for making this change in the bylaws. So, with this
mail I'm putting the idea out to the membership for comment, and noting that
I will ask our legal advisors about the best way to implement it. (Note that
the Board is unlikely to make a change like this without formally consulting
our membership via a referendum.)

Thanks,

- Jeff

[1] http://foundation.gnome.org/elections/2006/rules.html -> timeline below

-- 
linux.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia        http://lca2008.linux.org.au/
 
     "I guess there's part of me that's always resented it... to be an
   actor, you have to have someone else say yes to you." - Edward Norton