Re: Moving to two year terms for board elections

[Neil McGovern <neil gnome org>]

Hi,

On Thu, 2019-02-07 at 15:01 +0100, Andrea Veri wrote:
> Neil,
>
> the proposed change could have two immediate side effects:
>
> 1. the positive one being increasing term to 2y would give continuity
> to the current Board, the time for a new member to get up to speed is
> usually a couple of months, the proposal attempts to prevent this
> 2. the negative one being the proposal might discourage the
> membership
> from running for the Board due to the longer term and commitment
>
> While 1. would resolve a problem that has been biting us a lot in the
> past 2. is also a valid concern esp. during these years where
> reaching
> an adequate amount of candidates has become really hard (extending
> the
> term might take us to an even lower amount of candidates proposing).

Absolutely, that's a concern. It's one that has been considered more
widely by the board too. Here's an extract from the last minutes (not
yet published, so subject to change):

 * Improving board elections
   * Allan: We want to have elections where it's easy for all
Foundation members to meaningfully engage and debate with the
candidates, so that the Foundation members feel like they're having
more of an influence over the election. It feels like the last election
or two haven't really lived up to that. Some candidacy emails were
quite short on detail. We want to have a process where it's clear what
the candidates stand for, so that Foundation members know who they're
voting for.
   * Allan: Some ideas:
     * Have a template for candidates to fill in, with sections
including things like relevant expertise, priorities as directors, and
time commitment.
     * Have voting forms link to the candidacy statements, for easy
reference during voting.
     * Have candidates send their candidacy statements in to the
membership committee so that they determine beforehand, rather than
after the fact, if a candidate is eligible to stand for the board.
   * Allan: Also consider how we can encourage debate? Do we encourage
people to ask questions? If there haven't been any questions after a
week or three days, do we send an email to the membership to get the
questions rolling?
   * Nuritzi: should the old board prepare questions that the
candidates can answer?
     * Allan: If they are the same questions for each candidate, that
might be repetitive for >7 candidates.
   * Philip: I was surprised to get no questions at all during the last
election, given the candidate statement that I wrote.
   * Allan: Are there any other open source projects whose elections we
can learn from?
   * Kat: It would be good for the board to prepare questions for
candidates.  However, we don't want to discourage potential candidates
with a form.
     * Allan: It doesn't have to be a whole essay, but maybe short
questions like "How many hours a week can you commit?"
   * Rob: Aren't we planning to change the term lengths for board
members? We would only need three candidates if that went through.
     * Kat: If we change the terms this year, then we would still need
seven candidates and only three/four the following year.
   * Nuritzi: We discussed changing the term lengths during the
Foundation hackfest, but I didn't find anything in our GitLab issues
about it. Neil had a plan worked out, and would know how this is
progressing.
   * Federico: Can we encourage people to run for the board by
reminding them that we need board members as chairpeople or liaisons on
the committees?
     * Carlos: Maybe we can highlight things the board has done over
the past years, so people can realize what they can do in the board.
(e.g., the quote from Didier on how he wasn't aware of just how much
stuff there is to do and how much impact it has.)
   * Philip: Does it ever happen that candidates stand who are
ineligible?
     * Allan: That's maybe less related to engagement, it was more a
question I had last time when a lot of candidates announced themselves
at the last minute and if any of them had been ineligible there
wouldn't have been time for the membership committee to validate their
candidacies before the deadline, causing confusion among the members.
     * Rob: In Debian, for example, the project secretary assembles the
candidacies on a webpage.
   * Nuritzi: Would like the Foundation's web page to have up to date
bios on the staff.
   * Nuritzi: Until now, the Engagement team has been running the
gnome.org web site. Now that we are expanding, should we have staff
working on it? Rob: That seems like a question for Neil.
   * ACTION: (Neil): Present to the board on how the board term length
change is progressing.
   * ACTION: (Carlos): Figure out with the membership committee what
would be involved in a change in the election process.


Additionally, the board meetings have now moved to every two weeks,
rather than weekly, with an aim to make it monthly. This, combined with
having staff to work on items rather than individual board members
should reduce the work load considerably.

Finally, it could be argued that only having to find 4 people at a time
to run may help, rather than 7.

> if you're planning to move forward with the above proposal to the
> Board please make sure our considerations will be taken into account.

Absolutely. This is a decision for the board (rather than me), and I'll
be sure to pass on the concerns and update you after the meeting.

Neil
-- 
Neil McGovern
Executive Director, The GNOME Foundation