[OSGeo-Board] Board Nomination email (please review)

[Arnulf Christl]

Chris Holmes wrote:
> Apologies for not getting the email out today, but I think it makes 
> sense to do it tomorrow, to give the new members a day.  (and apologies 
> again for even later, as I accidentally sent this from another account, 
> so it didn't make it to the list.  Whoever is admin can just delete 
> that)  Has anyone emailed them directly to let them know that they are 
> in?  Welcome them and ensure they join the discuss list if they've not 
> already?
> 
> Below is my text for the email.  It'd be great if you all could review 
> it, to make sure I don't say anything crazy.  A few 'action items': I'd 
> ideally like a link to the full list of members.  If that can't be done 
> by tomorrow morning at like 11am my time, I'm going to just find the 
> members and list them all in the email.
> 
> Other item is to set up vote at board.osgeo.org.  Could you take care of 
> that Daniel?  Hopefully the way I described it (only members of 
> foundation can vote, only rich and I can read it) is possible with 
> collabnet's software.
> 
> The only other question is if the board qualifications should be 
> included.  I'm inclined to say no, as the email's already fairly long, 
> and indeed we can leave it to the discuss list to decide what qualities 
> are desired to some extent.  The important thing to me is to communicate 
> that it will be work.

The email is great. But. We are moving fast as some already pointed out 
and we have at one point been too fast already nd comitted an error. 
This is no problem, it was solved, but we are not in a hurry to get the 
voting done. Or is there a heavy deadline somewhere? We are fully 
oerative with the current 5 heads and if anything really large has to be 
decided we can postpone it for another week, I'd say.

Additionally I would want to give nominees a chance to have a good look 
around at what has been going on and what it means to be a BoD member. 
Many people are just starting to understand the scope of what the OSGeo 
is going to be. So I suggest to relax a little on the deadlines and 
allow for a good two weeks to set up the nominations. Let the dust 
settle which must have been involved in voting the full 45 and let the 
newbies find out what they can do now.
The voting process itself then can be done in a few days if the 
deadlines are well known well ahead, there is no need for a larger gap 
between closing nominations and starting voting.

Best regards,
Arnulf.

> The email:
> ----------
> It looks like we've got a great group of voting members in the 
> foundation, and now that we've wrapped up the process of electing the 
> full 45 initial members, it's time to complete the board of the 
> foundation.  Five of the agreed upon nine board members were elected in 
> Chicago, leaving open four spots to be filled once the full voting 
> membership was constituted.
> 
> Nomination to a board position is now open to any voting member of the 
> foundation.  In order to nominate someone, first check with the nominee 
> that he or she is willing to accept the nomination.  They should be 
> warned that the workload will be around 8 hours per week, likely front 
> loaded as we work on getting started up.
> 
> After the person has confirmed that they would like to be nominated, 
> send an email to the discuss at osgeo.org list, with a subject 'Nomation 
> for Board: xxx', where xxx is their name.  Discussion about the person's 
> concrete merits and qualifications can take place on the list.
> 
> Non-voting, aka 'associate members', are encouraged to contribute to 
> discussions on the list, and can also nominate board members, so that 
> the nomination process is open to the full osgeo membership, not just 
> voting members.
> 
> Nomination is open to all voting members of the foundation.  The list 
> can be found (link to url listing it, or I can write out all voting 
> members at the end of the email)
> 
> The two previously nominated board members need to be renominated, so as 
> to give them a chance to gracefully bow out before the process if the 
> time commitment is too much.  Write-ins are not allowed, and will be 
> discarded, all must be nominated through the process.
> 
> The nomination period will last until Wednesday, March 7th at 20:00 UTC 
> (see 
> http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=3&day=7&year=2006&hour=20&min=0&sec=0&p1=0 
> for the time in your country).  The nominations, along with relevant 
> discussion from the discuss list, will be compiled into an html 
> document, to be posted on March 8th.
> 
> Votes will be due Monday, March 13th at 20:00 UTC. Each member will have 
> four votes that they can distribute, from all to one candidate to one 
> per each candidates. Votes will be sent to a vote at board.osgeo.org, where 
> Rich Steele (as secretary) and a designated board member will tally. 
> This will be a private list, readable only by the secretary and the 
> designated board member(s). Only foundation voting members will be 
> allowed to post to it.
> 
> 
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