Re: Proposal: Shift election cycle back six months

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Tue, 2007-08-07 at 22:21 +1000, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> 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.

While this year's and last year's GUADECs were in July,
previous GUADECs have been in April (2001), May (2005),
and June (2004).  If we have elections in May and June,
then we wouldn't want to have future GUADECs any earlier
than July.  I don't know if that's a problem, but it is
worth mentioning.

Related to this, I worry about having the elections too
close to GUADEC.  Many of us just can't make it to GUADEC
every single year, for various reasons.  Board members,
of course, should make GUADEC a very high priority.  But
if you're only elected two weeks before GUADEC, it may
be too late to make travel arrangements, particularly
if you need a visa.

I see the value in having a face-to-face meeting early
in the board's term, but I think there should be anough
post-election, pre-GUADEC time for travel arrangments
to be made.

On another note, if anybody actually has a problem with
extending this board's term (I don't, and nobody else
who's replied so far seems to), another option would
be to phase the shift in over the next two or three
years by extending those terms by three or two months.

--
Shaun